


The King's Beasts

by ProfessionalMess



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bottom Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masturbation in Shower, Minor Injuries, Minor Original Character(s), Mutual Masturbation, Out of Character, Smut, Top Keith (Voltron), blowjob, but probably not a lot, especially injured or indisposed lance, for the paladins, introducing my bias towards lance, kind of, klance, lance and keith are heroes, lets go, mentions of people's fears and stuff, more smut, mutual torture, not really injury but mentions of blood, nothing - Freeform, oo boy, posession, space is wild, these tags are gonna be interesting, whats better than team voltron being defenseless against evil space creatures ??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-02-22 07:37:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 40,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13162326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessionalMess/pseuds/ProfessionalMess
Summary: "Um, guys? A little help?" Lance asked, struggling to get out of the tractor beam's grip, resorting to pressing every button on Blue’s control panel in an attempt to bullshit his way out when his calculated attempts got him nowhere."Keith, you take the bottom two floors, Pidge cover the next two, Hunk get the top two floors, and Lance and I will each take one in the middle." Shiro continued, seemingly ignoring Lance's call for help."Shiro? Allura? Keith? Can someone help me? I'm being sucked into the planet. You know, the one you said we should avoid? Hello? Anyone?"There was no reply this time, and Lance cursed under his breath as the door to the castle slowly grew farther and farther away. Lance slumped back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest."'Come to this creepy ass planet,' they said. 'I promise you won't die,' they said," Lance mocked, sticking his tongue out at the empty space around him. "I hope my death haunts them for years."





	1. Everything Black

**Author's Note:**

> cheers to being unable to tell if your fic has reached its full potential or not ;)
> 
> hope y'all enjoy, and since i can't seem to write anything without a song to go along, here the link to this fic's song:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcg6wekmCRA

"Be careful, Paladins," Allura warned. "The planet below hasn't had documented life for over a thousand years, but you never know what could be on it. Do your best to avoid the planet's surface so we don't take any unnecessary risks, and just focus on the origin of the signal."

"Copy that, Allura," Keith said, flying his lion towards the giant black mass floating above the planet without waiting to see who would follow him.

"Have you found any more information on this planet, Allura?" Pidge asked, racing after Keith as the rest of the paladins followed suit.

"The planet is named Zatvor, and it belongs to another planet nearby, although, which one, I cannot say. This appears to be a fairly desolate section of the galaxy, which means there's likely little to record, and few who are able to record what information there is."

"According to our maps from before Zarkon's reign, this area used to be far more populated. However, it doesn't appear to have disappeared _due_ to Zarkon. The cause of its decline is unknown." Coran added.

"They are pretty isolated. Maybe Zarkon interfered with a supply route they were receiving from another area, and without the supplies they just kind of started to die off?" Hunk offered.

"Who knows? This whole thing is givin' me bad vibes," Lance muttered. "Are you sure we have to do this? It doesn't seem like this menacing black floaty thing is hurting anyone."

"That 'menacing black floaty thing' is giving off a distress signal," Allura reminded him dryly. "So yes, we have to do this."

"If we die, I'm blaming this on you." Lance huffed, urging Blue to go faster and not trail behind.

"Focus, team. We don't know what we're up against here, we can't afford to be distracted." Shiro instructed through the comms, his dad voice in full effect.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Lance mumbled under his breath, frowning.

Lance almost couldn't take his eyes off of the black thing in front of them. They weren't very far away, but the details of the mass seemed to blur together, to the point where Lance couldn't even tell what it was supposed to _be_.

And it wasn't just _black_ , either. It was like the very absence of color, and Lance's eyes had a hard time focusing on it. The lights from their lions didn't even reflect off of the castle's surface, like the bricks were swallowing up any and all of the light around them.

The planet below the castle wasn’t much better, either. It was the same unsettling back as the castle, as if it wasn’t a planet so much as a glitch in reality, a hole in existence, a place where there just wasn’t anything at all.

As they got closer to their destination, the shapeless mass began to morph and take shape, and eventually pulled itself into some semblance of a castle. It was bigger than anything Lance had ever seen, and was just as menacing as he'd previously suggested, what with its spires and towers and its dimension hidden by its monochromacy.

"Wow, up close it's even worse. Is there any possibility we need someone to stay outside and like, keep watch?" Lance asked, laughing nervously.

"Don't be a pussy," Keith chastised. "This is awesome."

"Yeah, dude," Hunk agreed, the grin evident in his voice. "How often do you get to explore floating space castles?"

"Um, every day. _Every single one_." Lance answered, unimpressed.

"Whatever. This is cool!" Pidge said, the scientist in her probably going out of its goddamn mind trying to figure out how this castle worked.

"No, guys. All jokes aside, this place is really- Hunk! On your left!" Lance yelled suddenly, swerving left to avoid a black beam of light and hoping Hunk had time to do the same.

"That was close," Hunk sighed. "Thanks, Lance."

"No problem. Still think this is a good idea, everyone?"

"They're probably just unfamiliar with us, and trying to keep themselves safe. They _are_ putting out a distress signal, after all. They're probably just scared." Allura told them, advising that they pause their approach for a tick.

The lions floated in place, waiting, with Shiro in the lead, Lance taking up the rear, and the rest scattered somewhere in between. After what seemed like forever, they started moving again, the sky empty of threatening light beams and any other signs of life.

"That was it? Their entire defense system consists of a single beam of light?" Pidge asked, incredulous.

"Maybe that's all they have. Keep in mind, we have no idea what kind of state they're in. That could be all of the extra energy they have to offer." Shiro suggested, urging them forwards.

Shiro was almost to the castle now, Keith not far behind, and Lance watched them with a worried expression, chewing his lip while he waited for something bad to happen. The castle proved him wrong, though, and Shiro reached the door of the castle without any resistance, his lion disappearing inside as Keith followed him in.

"All right, once we get inside, split up. We have a lot of area to cover. We'll meet back at the lions once we're done." Shiro instructed as Hunk made his way inside. Lance was the only one who hadn't made it to the door yet, and he was begging Blue to go faster, unwilling to be left out here alone any longer than he had to.

By the time he reached it, the beam of light was back, but it was coming from the planet instead of the castle this time, and, before Lance could make it through the door, it began to slowly but surely pull him backward, towards the planet’s pitch black surface.

"Um, guys? A little help?" Lance asked, struggling to get out of the tractor beam's grip, resorting to pressing every button on Blue’s control panel in an attempt to bullshit his way out when his calculated attempts got him nowhere.

"Keith, you take the bottom two floors, Pidge cover the next two, Hunk get the top two floors, and Lance and I will each take one in the middle." Shiro continued, seemingly ignoring Lance's call for help.

"Shiro? Allura? Keith? Can someone help me? I'm being sucked into the planet. You know, the one you said we should avoid? Hello? Anyone?"

There was no reply this time, and Lance cursed under his breath as the door to the castle slowly grew farther and farther away. Lance slumped back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.

"'Come to this creepy ass planet,' they said. 'I promise you won't die,' they said," Lance mocked, sticking his tongue out at the empty space around him. "I hope my death haunts them for years."

Lance couldn't really do anything but sit and wait to land somewhere, so that's what he did, kicking his legs up on the control panel and trying to guess how far away he was every few minutes, since he was being drug backward and couldn't actually see.

The black castle was far away now, and the details had melted away again, and Lance still hadn't heard anything from his teammates. The closer they got, the less Lance could see, his vision overthrown as the darkness crowded in and settled over Blue's eyes, revealing nothing but inky blackness on every side.

Lance figured he was probably pretty close to the surface by now, but without the castle for reference, Lance couldn't really even tell if he was moving anymore, so he continued to sit and talk into the comms, hoping that someone would answer and pull him out of the dark.

No matter what he said, no matter how many insults he shouted into his helmet, still, no one answered, and the darkness started to invade the lights _inside_ of Blue, too, until Lance couldn't see _anything_ , outside or in.

"I fucking called it," Lance sighed, slumping back into his chair again and closing his eyes. "Why does no one ever listen to me?"

* * *

"Lance? Have you found anything?" Keith asked, already scouting around on Lance’s floor just in case Lance had missed something.

"I haven't heard from Lance this whole time, and I don't think he can physically keep his mouth shut this long. Has anyone seen him?" Pidge frowned after a few ticks had gone by with no answer.

"Maybe he stayed outside and the castle is blocking the comms. I haven't heard from Allura or Coran either, so it'd make sense." Hunk commented.

"What a shame," Keith grinned. "He would have liked this floor. Come look what I found."

Keith stood at the mouth of what looked to be the main control room, a massive, dark room with a panel of windows along one wall. In the middle of the room was a dais, made of the same black material that _everything_ seemed to be made of. The walls were draped in rich black curtains and drapes, and black banners hung from the vaulted ceiling.

Keith stepped further into the room as the other paladins made their way towards him, looking around at the nearly empty chamber with interest.

Other than the black throne atop the dais (seriously, what was with the black?), the decorations on the walls, and the windows, there was only one other thing in the room; the control panel.

The panel was facing the windows, stationed in the very middle, and black, just like the rest of everything.

In front of the control panel, though, is where Keith's attention was drawn.

Draped across the face of the panel was a robe, it's royal red some of the only color in the room and it's fraying threads just thin enough to show off the skeleton underneath.

Keith studied the shape as he moved forward, his steps quiet, his eyebrow quirked as he came to a stop next to what looked to be the remains of a forgotten king.

The light from the windows glinted off of the king's tarnished crown and made his bones glow, illuminating the scraps of cloth still clinging to their surface and the ring on his thumb.

"Keith?" Pidge's voice echoed in the dark room, and Keith waved the others over.

"I found the distress signal." Keith gestured to the king, his skeletal finger resting atop a button on the control panel.

"What happened to him?" Hunk asked, reaching out to poke the skeleton. The king's upper body was collapsed on top of the control panel as if he had fallen, or been unable to hold himself up, using the panel for support. Keith marveled at the fact that he was still in the same position, for all the time that he'd been dead, with no muscles to hold him up. Maybe his bones were melded to the surface of the panel. Keith didn’t want to move him to find out.  

"No idea," Keith said, his eyes flickering over the panel in search of any other information they could use.

"Did anyone find anything else?" Shiro asked, a slight frown on his face.

"Nope." the paladins answered in unison.

"Then let's go back to the castle and talk to Allura, see what else she's found," Shiro suggested, waving them out.

They left the king where he was but stopped the distress signal, trailing back through the cavernous halls of the castle until they reached the lions and made their leave.

They stopped just outside of the door, though, looking at each other in confusion.

"Um," Keith said, looking around. "Where's Lance?" 

* * *

"Blue? Is there any chance you can get us out of here?" Lance pleaded, a ball of fear gnawing at his stomach. Blue growled, making Lance worry more.

The pitch black atmosphere had long since blocked out every available light source, but Lance had started hearing the voices just a little while ago. He couldn't understand them, but they grated at his nerves and made him jumpy, so he'd started mumbling to himself, making noise just to block out the unnerving sound of the whispers in his ears. He alternated between talking to Blue, talking to himself, and talking into the comms, hoping that one of them would give him a solution, a way to get out.

The comms suddenly buzzed in his ear, the noise such a stark difference from the not-so-quiet silence that had enveloped him that Lance almost jumped out of his seat. Lance waited, his breathing quiet so he wouldn't miss a thing, but nothing else came. Lance sighed, holding his head in his hands.

The atmosphere was really getting to him, the combination of the thick dark, feathery voices, and complete lack of communication with his teammates putting him on edge.

Lance raised his head, bringing his hand to his eyes to make sure they were open.

"It's so fucking dark down here," Lance whispered, clutching the arms of his chair as he stared wide-eyed into the blackness and tried to make something, _anything_ , out. The longer he sat, the louder the voices got, and the more Lance raised his own voice in an effort to drown them out.

It wasn't working.

Lance couldn't project his voice into his head the way the other voices seemed to be able to.

It felt like the darkness and the voices were all closing in on him, pressing closer and closer against his skin, trying to get inside.

Lance tried to focus on his ragged breathing, tried to focus on pulling air in and out of his lungs instead of focusing on anything else, but the things around him were demanding too much of his attention, and he found that couldn't do it.

Suddenly, the voices stopped, as did Blue, and as did Lance's breathing as a single voice breezed through his mind.

_"Welcome to planet Zatvor."_

Lance heard Blue's mouth slide open, and he sat frozen in his chair, his body trembling as he struggled to get air into his lungs.

Lance couldn't place it, but something about the darkness had his mind and his heart and his blood racing, had his throat constricting and blocking the flow of air.

 _Calm down, Lance._ he thought, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it. The voices were back, pressing on his mind, urging him up and out of his chair and into the dark, and Lance didn't want to listen to them, but he had nothing better to do.

Lance shakily rose from his seat, taking slow steps forward until he was out of Blue and standing on solid ground.

The voices were louder here, sounding in the air around him _and_ inside his head, and Lance took cautious steps, holding out his hands in search of something to hold onto.

When his hand brushed past a wall, it started to glow, the faint light spreading across the surface in front of him until everything in sight was glowing. The walls looked like they were painted with glow-in-the-dark paint, and the designs stared at him from the walls as he noticed they made a sort of trail, and followed it.

The light led him down a tunnel, every side smeared with the same strange glow.

The tunnel reminded him of a little kid's bedroom, the bedroom of a kid who wanted to go to space one day. The rock was splattered with crude stars and wavy lines, sloppy circles and clouds of dust, and the sight of it managed to slow his raging heartbeat just enough.

Lance followed the glow until it lead him into a cavernous room, and once Lance came to a stop and began to look around, the light slowly began to taper off until he was, once again, standing in the dark.

"I _definitely_ just walked into a trap." Lance sighed, continuing to glance around him even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see anything.

The whispers were now a mere tingle in the back of his mind, but Lance found himself fumbling backward, shying away from the abyss of blackness in front of him. Lance continued to back up until his back hit the cave wall behind him, the rock cool against his palms as he flattened them against the surface.

Even though he couldn't see anything, and _hadn't_ seen anything when the room was still lit, Lance couldn't shake the feeling of something staring at him, lurking in the dark.

Lance widened his eyes as far as they could go, hoping that they would pick up something in the dark, praying that his helmet could assist where his eyes had failed and find something for him, even though he had no logical reason to hope for such a thing.

The chill of the rock inched through Lance's armor and he shivered, digging his fingertips into the cracks in the wall behind him as he waited.

"Guys? Can anyone hear me? _Please_ come get me. I promise I'll never complain about a mission ever again, just please-" Lance cut himself off as he felt a weight settle on his shoulders, felt a breeze brush gently against his face.

 _"Welcome to planet Zatvor."_ the voice said again, sending a shudder down Lance's spine. The heaviness was pulling him to the ground, onto his knees, pressing against his shoulders and head and chest until they ached, his bones creaking as the air was forced out of his lungs.

Lance tried to shake the weight off but it fought back, a strangled noise escaping his throat as the darkness slid closer, prying his fingers from their grip on the rock and holding his arms behind his back.

_"Would you like to know the truth? The truth about you, the truth about your friends, the truth about everything that ever was and ever will be? We could show you."_

Lance shook his head rapidly, his chest heaving as the darkness scraped along his skin, looking for a way inside.

_"We know the truth. We could show you. You deserve so much more truth than you've been given."_

Lance kept shaking his head, tears welling in his eyes as he struggled to breathe.

"No, please, I don't want it. Just let me go." Lance begged.

 _"That's why we exist, you know."_ The voice continued, as if Lance hadn't said anything, as if Lance hadn't refused its offer. _"We exist to tell the truth, show the truth, spread the truth."_

Lance shook his head so hard it hurt, a sob echoing in the room around him. "No, no, no. I don't want it. _Please_." The voice laughed and the darkness seeped through his helmet, clacking against his teeth, smoothing across his tongue, filling his throat, pouring down and over the delicate things inside of him.

Lance screamed.

 _"You'll thank us. I promise."_ it purred, caressing Lance's face with a cold finger, his skin tingling in its wake as it spread through his veins and into his head.

"No, no, no, no, no, no. Stop. _Stop._ Help! Someone help me! _Please!_ " Lance knew that no one could hear him, but he pleaded anyway, his voice going raw as he screamed and yelled and fought against the blackness that was poisoning his brain, clouding his thoughts.

_"Shh, loud one. We're just trying to help."_

An agonized noise tore its way out of Lance's throat as every muscle in Lance's body tightened, the movement beyond his control, his bones shuddering with the sudden strain. Then, the darkness let go, letting his body crumple to the ground with a thud. Lance choked and clawed at his throat and sucked air into his lungs, trying to just fucking _breathe_ before attempting to do anything else.

_"See? It's not so bad."_

"Get out of my head," Lance growled, ripping his helmet off and pulling at his hair. He could feel the darkness inside his mind, swirling and scraping and tapping about.

 _"We're going to show you so many things you've never seen before. We're going to tell you things you've only_ dreamed _of knowing."_

" _Get out, get out, get out!_ " Lance groaned, resisting the urge to throw his head against the rock beneath him and force it out himself.

_"Stop resisting."_

"No."

 _"That's an_ order _."_

Where the voice had once been airy, a voice layered with many, floating across the emptiness to his ears, it was now dense and dark and deep, and Lance found himself recoiling, pulling himself into the tightest ball he could manage.

The darkness took hold of Lance's mind and _squeezed_ , and Lance's voice broke as he cried out.

 _"Let go. Let us in. Let go. Let us win."_ the voice continued to chant and squeeze until it felt like every inch of Lance's body was alight with pain, flooding his senses.

"Make it stop," Lance sobbed, clutching his stomach as he rolled over and retched, coughing up blood. "Please, I'll do anything, just _make it stop_."

Lance drug his arm across his mouth, smearing whatever was there across his jaw as the pain slowly died away, his muscles relaxing and coaxing a sob from his throat.

_"Let go. Let us in. Will you let us in? Pretty please?"_

Lance didn't have the energy to refuse anymore, simply nodding his head and dragging air into his battered lungs as the darkness dug into his consciousness, blanketing him in a sense of calm that he couldn't do anything with but numbly accept.

_"We promise to show you the truth, all the truth you deserve."_

Lance felt himself sat up, watched his fingers flex before lifting to his hair and running through it, dropping back down to drift along the rest of his flesh.

"Good, good. We haven't had one of these in awhile." It was Lance's voice, maybe a shade darker, echoless despite the emptiness around them, but they were not his words, and Lance's brain could not comprehend how his mouth was moving without its help, how his mouth was speaking words that he had never thought to speak, that he didn't _want_ to speak.

Lance pulled a few breaths in and out of his lungs before his lips cracked into a smile and his head was thrown back with dark laughter that didn't feel like his own, his arm as heavy as lead when he moved it to steady himself.

_It's good to be back._

Lance couldn't focus on the fact that the thought wasn't _his_ , because he was tired and he was lonely and he was cold, and all he wanted to do was slip into the blissful warmth that the darkness could give him, rest his body and his mind and his soul for a while before he figured out how to fight this.

 _Rest_ , the darkness urged, smoothing his thoughts with a tendril of peace. _Rest, and the truth will be revealed when you wake. Rest, Lance, and don't worry about a thing._

_We have work to do._

* * *

"Allura? Coran? Have either of you seen Lance?" Keith asked as soon as the control room doors swished open.

"No, he was supposed to be with you. Is he not?" Allura answered, turning around to give Keith a confused look.

"We haven't seen _or_ heard from him since he warned me about that laser." Hunk informed, appearing behind Keith. Allura frowned, turning to the control panel and pulling up the cameras in and around the castle. After a few seconds, she frowned again, having found nothing.

"Well, what are the options? Let's list where he _realistically_ could have gone." Shiro suggested, coming to a stop beside Keith.

"As far as I'm concerned," Allura began. "there are only three viable options. Number one, he was kidnapped while we were distracted, number two, he flew away in his lion for some unknown reason, or, number three, he's on the surface of Zatvor. The most realistic? He's on Zatvor."

"He wouldn't go down there, would he?" Coran asked, gazing at the pitch black planet beneath them.

"I'm inclined to say probably not, but you never know with him." Hunk sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

 _"It's so fucking dark down here."_ Lance's voice crackled over the comms, causing everyone in the room to jump.

"That answers that question," Allura muttered, turning back to her screens. "Now the only thing we need to figure out is _why_ Lance is on that planet."

The comms still played as they considered the situation, the soft sound of Lance’s uneasy humming filling the background as if it had always been there. Keith listened as Lance’s tone grew more and more scared, more and more timid, and wished he knew why, wished he knew what Lance was seeing.

"Have you learned anything else about it? The planet, Zatvor, or whatever?" Pidge asked, pulling out her computer as she sat.

"Not much," Allura said, pulling up what information she had on the screen. "I can tell you the planet's age, name, and location, but all information as to who owns it, who used to live there, and _who still might_ will require some more extensive research."

_Name: Zatvor_

_Age: 34,056 years_

_Location: Dyr Star System_

It was Pidge's turn to frown, her eyes flitting over the available information.

"Let's get to searching, then," Shiro sighed, slapping his thighs as he turned and left the room, indicating that everyone get their devices and follow him. He lead them to the lounge, watching them spread out as he cracked open his own device and began to search.

"What are we looking for, exactly?" Hunk asked, chewing on his bottom lip.

"Any information that can tell us more about what we're dealing with." Alura supplied. "Information like who owns Zatvor, who lives on that planet, who lives/lived on Zatvor, the purpose that Zatvor currently serves, and things such as that."

Hunk nodded, falling into the cushions with a huff.

"Be sure to let us know if you find anything," Allura said absently, already lost in the contents of her screen as she settled onto the couch beside Shiro. Coran perched on the armrest next to her, his computer balanced on his knee in a way that Keith considered inefficient, even as Coran happily got to work.

Keith glanced at Pidge and Hunk on the couch across from the other three before pulling his computer onto his lap and beginning his search.  

The room was silent except for the sound of typing and quiet breaths, as well as the occasional shuffle. Keith had never seen the team be so quiet, and he couldn't tell if it was due to the absence of Lance or the task at hand.

If only they could be like this on missions.

"Lance was right," Pidge mumbled after a while. "This place is giving me bad vibes. How can there be _zero_ information on a planet? Someone has to know _something_ , right?"

"I've never seen a planet with so little information to offer." Allura frowned, her face wrinkled in concern.

"Keep looking. There has to be something." Keith encouraged, his head bent over the screen on his computer as he tried to let the mundanity of the process drown out the fear growing in the pit of his stomach.

The room fell silent again until Lance's voice came across the comms again, succeeding in scaring the shit out of Team Voltron for a second time that day.

 _"I_ definitely _just walked into a trap."_

"Jesus Christ, Lance." Keith sighed, shaking his head in exasperation.  

"Sounds like we better hurry," Shiro muttered, his hands flying across his keyboard, a slight frown on his lips. Keith could hear Lance's heavy breathing over the comms, could almost hear his pulse if he listened hard enough, and it only made the fear worse.

_"Guys? Can anyone hear me? Please come get me. I promise I'll never complain about a mission ever again, just please-"_

Keith raised his head at the sudden halt to Lance's words, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He locked eyes with Hunk, who looked just as perplexed.

As far as Keith was concerned, Lance literally did not know how to shut himself up, which meant there was something down there that either motivated him to do so, or did it for him.

"I am officially uncomfortable with this situation, and incredibly worried for Lance." Hunk informed them, wringing his hands together.

"I know that Lance is probably in trouble, but we can't just dive in and try to save him without knowing what we might encounter. We _have_ to try and figure out what's on the surface of Zatvor before we can proceed." Allura told them, her eyes never leaving her screen but creased with worry all the same.

"I agree with Allura. Keep looking, team. I'm sure we'll find something soon, and then we can make a plan and carry it out." Shiro said. Everyone's attention returned to their computer screens as they scoured every information bank in the universe, trying to learn something about planet Zatvor.

Keith kept having to force his attention back to the words on his screen, his mind occupied with imagining Lance in all the worst situations possible, every new scenario ending worst than the last.

Keith couldn't handle the thought of Lance trapped somewhere, all alone and in need of assistance, but it seemed to be all that his brain could think about.

Keith cursed under his breath, shaking his head and locking his eyes back onto the article he was reading.

       _The planet Zatvor is known throughout the galaxy for its impenetrable black coloring. Much of the planet is still a mystery to scientists, although several exploration crews are set to disembark in the near future and learn more about the mysterious planet. It is unclear who lives on the planet, what the living conditions are like there, and what the planet is even made of. There are no other planets in the whole of the universe that look quite like Zatvor. Zatvor is currently considered one of the top wonders of the universe, and attracts travelers from all corners, although none have dared to touch its surface. Once more information is acquired about the illusive Zatvor, we'll be the first to know._

"This article sounds like it was written about Zatvor, but from another planet. Maybe it's from the planet that owns it? Maybe it's just another one close by? Regardless, we should try searching for planets in the vicinity, see if any of them have records of Zatvor that would be useful." Keith suggested.

"Good idea, Keith." Allura praised, her brow furrowing as she recalled the planets nearest to them. "I believe that Malo is the planet closest to us, so it's the most likely to be watching Zatvor, and is probably the planet that _owns_ Zatvor, as well. Pidge, Hunk, and I will search around there. Keith, Shiro, and Coran, you keep looking with Zatvor. And, hurry."

Keith hummed in confirmation, the noise quickly cut off by the sound of Lance's frantic voice returning to the comms, interrupting the shaky breathing that had become their background noise.

_"No, please, I don't want it. Just let me go."_

"Are they trying to offer him space drugs?" Pidge quipped, her eyebrow raised.

"My guess would be no," Shiro said dryly, shooting her a look. Pidge raised her hands in surrender, turning back to her work.

 _"No, no, no. I don't want it._ Please. _"_

"At least we can trust him to not give into peer-" Pidge's comment was cut off by the sound of a sob, followed by a choking noise and then a gut-wrenching  _scream_.

The paladins raised their heads slowly, the color draining from their faces as they clenched their jaws and looked at each other, eyes opened wide in fear.

"Are we just gonna sit here and let him suffer?" Keith demanded, snapping out of his trance as anger licked through his veins and his voice raised to be heard over the broken noises streaming out of Lance's mouth.

 _"No, no, no, no, no, no. Stop._ Stop. _Help! Someone help me!_ Please! _"_

Keith clenched his fists, fury building behind his eyes as he glared at everyone else in the room.

"I can't let you endanger yourself by rushing into a battle unprepared," Allura reminded him, a distressed look on her face. "I'm sorry, but until we know more about what's on Zatvor, none of you are leaving."

The members of the room grimaced as Lance kept screaming, yelling, calling out for help. Pidge's face was paler than Keith had ever seen it as she bowed her head to continue her research, and Hunk clapped his hands over his ears, shaking his head as the look on his face made it obvious that it wasn't keeping out the noise.

"Can we turn the comms off?" Shiro asked, his features pained.

"No," Keith snapped, his voice hoarse. "It's our only source of information. We need to keep them on."

"Keith," Hunk pleaded, looking at him with desperate eyes.

"He's right," Allura told them, locking stares with Hunk, who had now whipped his head in her direction. "We need every bit of intel we can get. And, on top of that, we need to know what's happening. It's the only way to know what's going on, as awful as it may be."

The sound of Lance's choking and strained breathing echoed around the room as the paladins grit their teeth and diverted their attention back to their respective screens, hurriedly searched for something that could tell them who or _what_ was terrorizing their friend.  

_"Get out of my head."_

Keith had never heard Lance's voice sound so venomous, so angry, and Keith couldn't help but wonder what he was fighting, how likely it was that he could win.

" _Get out, get out, get out!"_

Everyone winced at Lance's voice, trying to fend off the restlessness and the fear and the helplessness that weighed down their limbs as they continued their frantic search.

"Why doesn't this planet have any fucking _information_?" Hunk growled, his lower lip trembling as his eyes flicked back and forth between his computer screen and the room around him.

"I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. It shouldn't be this hard to learn about a planet. I know this is a low population area, but this is _ridiculous_." Allura shook her head, looking like she was resisting the urge to throw her computer across the room.

_"No."_

Lance's breath shuddered, drawing the attention of everyone in the room before he cried out, his voice raw and broken.

Hunk pushed his computer to the side and hopped off the couch, pacing back and forth as he clutched one hand in his hair and curled the other into a fist, shoving it into his mouth.

"Hunk, we need you on the computer. We have to _find something_." Shiro reminded him, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.

"I- I can't... I can't _listen_ to this." Hunk rasped, tears sliding down his face as he locked eyes with Shiro.

"We can't help him until we have something," Shiro said gently, his features softening.

"I wish I could see what was happening." Allura spat, clenching her jaw.

"No, you don't," Coran said fiercely, shaking his head, locking eyes with her for a brief moment before they both looked away.

Lance coughed in the background and Keith shuddered, the comms sounding more and more like the soundtrack to his nightmares.

 _"Make it stop,"_ Lance begged. _"Please, I'll do anything, just_ make it stop _."_

"I found something!" Pidge shouted suddenly, jumping off the couch only to sit back down. "I think I found what we need."

The comms went silent, as if they too were listening to whatever Pidge had found.

"Planet Zatvor is the property of the nearby planet Malo, who didn't really use it for anything other than as a tourist attraction, since it was popular due to its strange color and density, until about a thousand years ago," Pidge told them quickly, eyes darting back and forth as she scanned whatever she was reading.

"What happened a thousand years ago?" Keith asked, leaning forward and dumping his computer to the side.

"Since Malo is on the very edge of the galaxy, it had a high population of criminals and people running from the law. Malo's capital city Velhavende attracted the largest concentration of criminal activity, due to a large pool of wealth in the area and a lack of proper security. Many of the rich in the city adopted the mindset that a criminal would never attempt anything in such a busy, populated place, and they were largely unaware of the actual crime rates, as the king and his guard kept much of the criminal activity out of the public's attention. The king of Malo, King Terr, lived in Velhavende inside his castle, and criminals were constantly trying to break in, attempting anything from stealing his wealth to stealing his crown to murdering him so they could just have all of it. The color (the blackest black anyone had ever seen) and the design (majestic and dark and compelling in an unfamiliar but inviting way) of King Terr's castle drew even more attention, and the king rarely went a day without a threat to his safety."

As Pidge drew her next breath, Lance's laugh boomed through the comms, heavy and menacing and eerie in a way that Keith had never imagined it would be.

"That's bad. Ooh, that's bad." Hunk whined, tugging at his shirt anxiously.

"Keep reading, Pidge." Shiro urged, glancing around the room. "What else does it say?"

"Eventually," Pidge continued. "King Terr expanded and reinforced his royal guard in an attempt to tighten the city's security. Every man and woman caught and arrested was sent to prison without trial, and was left to rot in the bottom-most layer of the king's castle. In an effort to cleanse his city and deter further crime, King Terr asked his scientists to create something that could enter someone's mind and force them to tell the truth, something that could encourage them to enlighten the king with information, such as motives and consorts and future plans, something that would allow the king to get ahead of and hopefully put an end to the crime in his city. The beasts were made with impressive speed, and were named the Raja Kéwan, or the King's Beasts. The king was assured by every scientist in his arsenal that these beasts could do what the king wanted, could end the suffering and violence in his streets, and the king believed. The king thought the Raja Kéwan could truly solve all of their problems. When they were tested on the prisoners in the castle, the king discovered that the beasts were a little darker, a _touch_ more evil, than anticipated. The Raja Kéwan could force people to tell the truth, yes, but they fed on fears, as well.

"Everyone wants to know the truth about what they fear, and some even think that _knowing_ that truth will _eliminate_ their fear. So the beasts would enter a mind, offer the king whatever information he asked of them until they found what they were looking for, and then began to tell the king of their host's fears, weaving unnerving tales that sounded like something from the darkest nightmare. All the while, the beasts would devour the fear, whether that fear came from the host itself or the people hearing its stories, and would feed off of the resulting sadness, the pity, the despair, any and every negative emotion their presence could invoke. Eventually, however, the Raja Kéwan grew bored of their host, grew bored of the taste of their sorrow, and killed them, readying themselves to invade whoever was next. A few weeks later, when the king and his scientists returned to run tests on the beasts and their hosts, every single prisoner hung from the exact center of their cell, long dead, with their greatest fear smeared onto the cell wall behind them in black blood.

"After additional research was done, the scientists figured out that the beasts put the host's mind in a sort of comatose state and took over, rummaging through the brain to find the things they thought were interesting enough to share. Every single beast survived their hosts' death, and were promptly banished to Zatvor, effectively halting the planet's tourist activity and furthering their isolation. Years later, when the people found out about the crime King Terr had been hiding from the public, the beasts, and the unjust incarceration, experimentation, and death of the prisoners, they viewed his acts as cruel and banished the king and his castle to float above Zatvor forever, as a sort of silent warning to all." Pidge's face was hard to read as she finished telling about the article she’d found, but Keith couldn't help but think she looked more worried than he had ever seen her.

"So, the dead guy we found was King Terr?" Keith asked, still trying to wrap his mind around what they'd learned.

"It would appear so, yes." Pidge nodded.

"The ship," Allura muttered, her eyes downcast as she pieced her thoughts together.

"What about the ship, Princess?" Coran asked, looking at the side of her face.

"I bet the Raja Kéwan are using the king's ship, and its distress signal, to lure fresh bait to the surface of Zatvor, so they have a meal even though they were banished."

"It would make sense," Shiro mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face.

"Okay, so, what do we do? What's the plan?" Hunk asked.

"Does it say anything about how to stop them, or expel them from the host, or anything that might be useful?” Keith asked, propping up his head in his hands.

Pidge’s eyes flickered as she read over the article again, scanning for anything that fit under what Keith had asked for. “The only thing that comes kind of close is the mention that not a single victim survived the infiltration.” Pidge shrugged, face hollow.  

“Shit,” Keith breathed, leaning back against the couch.

“Okay, well, cure or not, we need to go pick him up. We don’t know if Blue will let him pilot her back, or what kind of state he’s in. The first step should be retrieval, then we can go from there.” Shiro said, his voice firm as he looked around the room.

“Yeah, okay.” Pidge agreed, snapping her computer shut.

Just as Keith was about to stand and head to his lion, there was a knock on the door.

The paladins froze, staring at each other with wide eyes. Whoever was on the other side didn’t wait for an answer, simply sliding the door open and stepping into the room.

Keith sighed, his body relaxing when he saw a familiar head of chocolate brown hair, familiar plates of white and blue armor, only to tense up again when Lance lifted his head.

It certainly didn’t look like Lance.

There was something startling wrong with the way he looked, the way he felt.

As soon as Lance walked into the room, a heavy weight settled over them, cushioning the noise and blanketing Keith's skin. When Keith drew his eyes back to Lance’s face, he sucked in a breath, his hopes of Lance being okay immediately crushed.

Lance’s eyes were a rich, sickening black from edge to edge, a similar black ink running down his lips and his chin and his neck as his mouth split into a twisted version of his usual shit-eating grin. From the skin not covered by his suit, Keith could see the veins under Lance’s brown skin, filled with black ink, running little fingers and cracks underneath the surface.

Keith couldn’t tell if Lance’s eyes were truly moving around the room to take them in, but it _felt_ like they were, his grin only growing wider as he took in their shocked expressions, their motionless bodies.

Lance chuckled, and it was then that Keith concluded that the man standing before him was _not_ Lance, just a scary, horrifying clone of him. Lance’s laughter sent a chill down his spine, his mind shuttering as it tried to process the sound, and the voice that had delivered it.

Lance’s voice was the most unsettling thing about him, Keith was sure. Keith could hear it in the air and Keith could hear it in his head, and Keith could feel it press against his mind like a dead weight and pull against his limbs like a million tiny fingertips.

Without giving his brain time to catch up, the voice kept going, its rich sound enveloping Keith’s ears in a way that made him breathless, desperate for space.

“He should have known he couldn’t count on you guys to save him.” Lance, or whoever this was, said, the grin never faltering, the black ink continuing to push past his tongue and drip down his face to the floor below.

Lance leaned back against the wall, watching them with amusement as they struggled to wrap their head around his presence, as they struggled to figure out what it meant and what they could do about it.

Eventually, drawing in a breath that hurt to take, Keith spoke. “Who are you?”

“Lance, technically,” he shrugged, a small, dark smile playing on his lips. “or, an embodiment of his fears, if you’d rather. I’m here to tell you all about them.”

Keith shuddered, his eyes drawn to Lance but his mind begging him not to look.

“How did you get here?” Keith continued, clenching his jaw.

“I flew.” Lance shrugged.

“In what?” Keith grit out.

“My vessel,” Lance gestured to his body, his grin coming back in full force. “Whatever _he_ came in is still on my planet. The damn thing wouldn’t let me in, can’t imagine why.”

Lance chuckled to himself as Keith glanced at Shiro, and then at Hunk, the three of them surging forward and latching onto Lance at the nod of Keith’s head.

“So angry, so controlling, so much _fun,_ this species.” Lance drawled as they wrapped their hands around him, dragging him out the door. Lance relaxed his muscles, waiting until they’d gotten out into the hall before he started struggling. The way he bucked his body made him incredibly hard to hold onto, and he seemed to be stronger than normal Lance was, further complicating the task.

At first, Keith had the three of them grab Lance as just a precaution, but now, it was becoming apparent that it would actually take their combined strength to guide him down the hall, towards the bottom of the ship. Allura had mentioned the prison cells once, long ago, but Keith had never seen them. They’d never had a need, before now.

Allura gave them directions as they dragged Lance through the corridors, sweat breaking out across their skin as they struggled to keep him within their grasp, the others trailing along silently as they went.

Every once in awhile, Lance would just start laughing, his body going slack as he did, the sound that came out of him tugging at Keith’s mind. Then Lance would go back to struggling, that demonic grin stretched across his lips, the black ink smearing across his armor as he moved.

Eventually, after Allura spent thirty ticks unlocking the high-security doors and finally drug them open, they managed to push Lance into the first cell they saw and slammed the door as soon as he set foot inside, locking it as quickly as they were able to.

Lance let out a sigh, pushing against the bars in front of him and listening to them groan and beg to give way before he eventually grew bored, disappointed that the bars were still solid.

Up close, Keith could see the shadows swirling in Lance’s eyes, could see the dried blood smeared across his cheek and jaw, could see the veins under his skin jumping with every pump of blackened blood. Up close, Keith could feel the amplified pull of Lance’s power, could feel even stronger the alluring thrum of peaceful darkness that rolled from him in waves, could feel the absence of feeling wherever Lance was. Up close, Keith could watch the ink drip off of Lance’s teeth, off his tongue, off his lips, his chin, down his neck, down the chest plate of his armor and onto the floor, could watch the ink glimmer as Lance reached up a hand and drug it across his face, paving over the dried blood that was already there, could watch the ink dance as it spread across the floor and towards his boots, splattering the pristine floor beneath them.

Lance like this was hard to look away from, and Keith didn’t know if it was because of the beast inside or if Keith had a thing for dark Lance. Either way, his chest felt too tight as he looked Lance up and down, and his breath felt stuck in his throat as he let his gaze drift to Lance’s eyes and saw the abyss there, saw the shadows as they slithered by, saw a nothing so empty that it felt like a something.

Lance like this was hard to look away from.

Keith wasn’t so sure he wanted to.

“What a fun group. I picked good, didn’t I? So much fear for me to eat, so many feelings for me to play with.” Lance said, gripping the bars of the cell in front of him. Keith snapped from his reverie as Lance spoke, his voice just as unnerving as the first time Keith heard it.

Lance’s eyes flicked over to Coran, who was standing in silence on the other side of the room farthest from the door. Coran’s face drained of color as Lance stared at him, his features amused. Then he drug his eyes down the line, staring just long enough for it to be uncomfortable, mumbling to himself as he went.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” Lance’s eyes kept moving down the line, almost to Keith, who was on the very edge. Lance was currently stuck on Pidge, who was trying to curl into herself and get away from Lance’s eyes, or his lack thereof. “Who’s the most terrified of them all?”

Lance laughed at his little joke, looking incredibly pleased with himself as he stared Hunk down. Eventually, finally, his eyes slid to Keith and stayed there, the edges of Lance’s mouth cracking as he pushed his smile wider. “Bingo. Skin white as snow, hair black as ebony. Quite fitting, don’t you think?”

Keith clenched his fists, crossing his arms over his chest as he wondered how much Lance would tell, how much he even knew.

“Your name isn’t Snow White, though, is it?” Lance continued, his eyes making it hard to focus. “No, your name is Keith. Lance thinks quite a lot about you, Keith.” Keith glanced at the others, gauging the reactions on their faces as he tried to figure out his own. Where was Lance going with this?

“He thinks about your body, your skin, and those pretty red lips of yours, spends all his time thinking about _all_ the things he wants to do to them.” Lance finished slowly, drawing his tongue across his teeth when he was done, his eyes flickering as if he was imagining them now.

Keith was up against the bars of the cell in a flash, his fingers wrapped around Lance’s neck, his palm slipping against the dark ink that stained the skin there. Lance only met his eyes and let out a strangled laugh, more ink pouring out to coat the forearm of Keith’s armor. Keith growled and unclenched his fingers, throwing Lance to the ground as he turned and stalked back to Hunk’s side, his jaw working as his eyes narrowed.

It was obvious that the rest of the room didn’t know how to react, to Lance or to anything else, and seemed almost scared to, but Keith wished they would speak up, say something, draw the attention away from him and distract him from the man in front of him so neither of them spilled all of his secrets.

Lance was already back on his feet by the time Keith looked back at him, but Lance wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. It was exactly what Keith had wanted, had just been asking for, but Keith couldn’t find it in him to be grateful, his stomach dropping as he remembered he wasn’t the only one with things they were afraid of, wasn’t the only one with things to hide.

“ _God,_ this is so much fun. I mean, holy _shit_ , the whole lot of you are like a bunch of scared little children. I could sit here all day, just listing off fears, exposing secrets. How would you guys like that?” Lance’s smile was getting more and more demonic, more and more cracked, more and more broken, and Keith wanted to reach up and wipe it away.

“Let’s go, everyone,” Shiro said suddenly, turning to lead them out.

“Wait,” Allura grabbed his shoulder. “We need someone to stay here and watch him. Preferably, someone who isn’t scared of him.” Allura nodded to Pidge and Hunk, who looked scared shitless, either of Lance or the situation or both.

“I’ll do it,” Keith offered immediately. “I’m not afraid.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Lance commented, sitting on the floor of the cell now. “He’s not afraid. Of me, at least.”

Keith clenched his jaw as Shiro shook his head. “Someone can come back. We need a plan first, and we need to make it in private.” Shiro cut a look at Lance, who simply waved back. “We can use the cameras to watch him until we have one.”

Allura nodded, Pidge already pulling up the security feed for the prison sector as they filed out, trying to move as casually as they could. They walked back in tense silence, the echo of their footsteps growing louder the farther from Lance they got, as if his presence gobbled up the sound. Once they made it back to the lounge, they collapsed onto the couches, not daring to break the silence.

“What are we gonna do?” Pidge finally asked, her voice wobbly and small.

“I don’t know, Pidge, but we’ll figure something out,” Shiro assured her, giving her the warmest look he could manage. Pidge just shook her head, turning her attention towards the screen displaying Lance’s cell.

For a while, they just sat and watched him, Pidge projecting the live footage into the room as Lance rocked himself back and forth, grinning and laughing and dripping ink onto the floor, contributing to the puddle he was already sitting in.

Lance was even more disturbing like this, sitting at the front of his cell like a sick animal in a cage. Without them as a distraction, Lance seemed to lose his mind, lose his control, but never seemed to lose his grace, his sense of superiority, even as he babbled and sat and rocked rhythmically on the cell floor.

His darkness seemed ancient, his confidence and smug nature present even in his insanity, and the sight sent shivers down Keith’s spine.

From this distance, the blackness of Lance’s veins cut across his skin like cracks in the camera lens, and he kept pulling at his hair, clawing at his skin, his body shuddering as he rocked himself and laughed, his eyes half closed and his voice dark.

Keith wanted to rip it out, the darkness inside of Lance, wanted to hurt it, whatever was inside, wanted to take over, wanted to strip it from every cell in his body. He wanted to put his hands on Lance and coax it out, wanted to pull the ink from his throat and the black from his veins and the dark from his eyes with gentle touches and the brush of soft fingertips on skin and the press of warm lips on scars. He wanted to hold it down, whatever it was, wanted to force it to the ground and control it, wanted to grip it harder and harder until it bruised and broke and gave up and gave in.

Keith wanted to have Lance back, no matter what he had to do to get it.

Keith’s attention was drawn back to the screen when Lance began to speak to himself, his voice stuck somewhere between singing and mumbling, smooth as it floated through the air, not very loud but not needing to be, hovering somewhere above a whisper as he continued to rock back and forth and smile.

_little lance, all alone, for the rest of his life. no one knows who he truly is, and no one even tries._

_little lance, on his own, wearing his disguise. no one even questions it, they can’t see past his lies._

_little lance, so alone, waits till he can hide, then he lets the darkness in and sits alone and cries._

_little lance, all alone, is dead behind the eyes. don’t think he hasn’t thought of it, saying his goodbyes._

_little lance isn’t afraid to beg or steal or die, but when it comes to those he loves, he’s absolutely terrified._

Lance kept mumbling to himself, a blissed-out look on his face as Pidge shook her head rapidly, shutting off the camera feed. No one in the room objected, letting it fall silent again.

* * *

_Lance was done with resting._

_Lance was restless._

_Lance was fighting against the pressure in his head, but the pressure wouldn’t lessen, no matter how hard he pushed._

_Lance opened his eyes and then he could see, and Lance knew where he was. He was in the castle, but it was a part of the castle that he’d never seen before._

_He was in a cell._

_Lance could feel his blood rushing through his veins, and he could feel something dripping from his mouth, down his throat, and could hear it drip drop on the ground below._

_Lance wanted to look down, lift a hand to his mouth and see what it was, but he wasn’t in control. He couldn’t._

_“Let me out!” Lance yelled. His voice echoed in his head but not in his ears, and he knew that his mouth didn’t speak the words in his head like it should have._

_Lance struggled against the thing in his head, tried to shove it off and away and out, but it was strong, so much stronger than him, and he just bloodied his fingertips trying to force it away._

_The darkness tried to shush him, tried to lull him back into thoughtless sleep, but Lance refused, screaming at the presence in his head._

_“Get out!”_

_The darkness did not leave._

_Lance didn’t know how to make it leave._

_Lance just wanted it to fucking_ leave _._

_Lance just wanted his body back, wanted his mind back, wanted to leave this prison his mind was in and leave this prison his body was in and go back to the way things were, back before he had broken and let the monster in._

_God, Lance never should have let the monster in._

_But what was he supposed to do?_

_It hurt_ so bad _._

_Lance didn’t know what to do._

_His eyes were flicking back and forth in his skull, the only thing that Lance could move, trying to get the rest of his body to do something, to react to the things he was telling it to do._

_“Fuck!” Lance yelled, banging his fists against the walls in his head. His body didn’t answer, but he kept knocking, kept yelling, kept screaming, waiting for something to change, waiting for the darkness to give in._

_The darkness did not give in, but Lance wasn’t about to, either._

_Eventually, Lance’ voice died in his throat as something moved into his vision._

_It was a shape that he knew, a shape he was a familiar with. A shape he wanted to know even better._

_Keith._

_Keith didn’t seem afraid, and Lance wanted to yell at him, to tell him that he should be._

_Lance was afraid, so very afraid._

_Lance wanted Keith to teach him how to stop being so afraid, how to hide his fear deep down where no one, not even himself, could find it._

_Keith walked to the bars of the cell and kneeled in front of where Lance sat. His face was soft, and Lance wanted to reach out and touch it._

_Lance’s arm did not move._

_Keith’s lips were shifting, speaking words that Lance could not hear. Lance just watched his lips, studied them for as long as he could, and memorized the way they looked, in case this was his last chance._

_Lance could feel his own lips begin to move, the darkness replying to whatever Keith had said, but Lance didn’t know what_ he _was saying, either. He couldn’t hear it, couldn’t think it, couldn’t control it._

 _“I want him to know that I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, that I’m not just doing it because he can’t control what he does, because_ you _want me to. I want him to know that I want to taste him, and touch him, and that this isn’t him, but I’m gonna do everything I can to get that chance, to kiss_ him _, the right way. Will you tell him, make sure he knows?”_

_Suddenly, Lance could hear what Keith was saying, and the sound of his voice was such a relief that Lance almost forgot to listen to his words._

_Lance’s stomach clenched when he replayed Keith’s words in his head._

_“He heard. He knows.” Lance’s lips said back, before stretching into a grin._

_Then, Keith’s hands were reaching through the bars of his cell, and Lance could feel his fingertips on his face, and when Lance told his arm to reach up, to touch back, his body listened._

* * *

It had been decided that Keith would be the official guard of Lance, because no one else thought they could watch him without having an adverse reaction of some kind.

Keith changed out of his armor and made his way back down to the bottom of the castle, having gotten the key to the dungeon door from Allura before he left.

Lance was right where they’d left him, on the floor behind the bars, his knees touching the metal. The puddle of ink on the floor had grown, noticeably but not much, and Lance had stripped himself of his armor, his body suit tugged down to his waist, leaving his chest on display.

Keith stood in front of the cell but it didn’t seem like Lance had noticed him yet, his eyes flicking back and forth in his head as he stared at the ceiling.

Keith grabbed a chair from the cell next to Lance and sat in front of him, staring at him as he fought a war inside his head.

Keith hoped Lance was winning.

Suddenly, Lance’s mouth split into a grin once again, and his eyes locked onto Keith’s frame, and it seemed that the beast was back.

“Well, hello, Keith. It’s good to see you again.” Lance purred, scooting closer to the bars of his cell as Keith looked at him.

Keith didn’t answer, didn’t move.

“Mm,” Lance hummed, his head lolling back. “Lance thinks such _delicious_ thoughts about you. So dirty, Lance’s mind. Really, if you could see the things I’ve seen, I’m _positive_ it’d make you blush. Might even make you flustered.”

Keith leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

Lance’s lips cracked as he grinned, forcing the smile wider, black ink spilling from the spaces in between.

“I know you’re afraid of being _rejected_ , and _left behind_ , like you have been so many times before, but _come on_. Look at Lance and tell me you wouldn’t at least be willing to _try_ it.” Lance continued, clutching the bars.

“I’ve thought about it,” Keith answered, putting his chin in his hand. “More than a few times.”

Lance chuckled, leaning his forehead against the metal. “I’m not surprised. The things Lance imagines are so vivid, I can’t believe they haven’t actually happened.”

Keith shook his head, looking away. “What are you afraid of, then?” Keith asked, his eyes flicking back to Lance’s frame. They couldn’t stay away for very long. “Not Lance’s fears, but yours, you, whatever you are. What are you afraid of?”

Lance laughed again, throwing his head back with the action this time. “Me? I’m not afraid of _anything_.”

“Everyone’s afraid of _something_ ,” Keith pressed. “Even evil beasts from outer space.”

“Fine.” Lance relented. “I’m afraid of people no longer being afraid. The minute people stop having fears, I lose my food source. Bad news for me. And that’s the only thing I’ll _ever_ fear, because it’s the only thing that can hurt me.”

Keith hummed, leaning back in his chair. “Logical.”

Lance’s grin brightened, ink pushing between his teeth. “Isn’t that funny? Fears rarely are. Being sentient comes with having fears, but they’re never in our control. They’re often strange, irrational, and pointless, but we can’t _do_ anything about them. We can’t change whatever event caused them, or reach into our brains and pluck them out, throw them away. Even if we admit that we’re being stupid about them, that it’s unlikely they’ll ever happen and it really wouldn’t be so bad if they _did_ happen, you can’t convince yourself you don’t care, that you’re over it, because you’re not. You’ll always just be afraid, until the day you can’t be anymore.”

“All emotions are like that,” Keith countered. “Rarely in your control, often irrational, seemingly random sometimes. Fear really isn’t that different.”

“Fear is a dictator,” Lance said simply, leaning back on his arms. “Fear is a motivator, unlike almost anything else. It’s amazing, what fear can do. That’s why I’m so powerful, so persuasive. Everyone is just _so afraid._ ”

Keith crossed his arms over his chest, letting the conversation fall silent as he ran his eyes over Lance’s body. Keith couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Lance shirtless, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying the view, even if Lance’s exposed skin was spiderwebbed with black veins, pulsing along with his heart.

“He wants to touch you.” Lane said suddenly, studying Keith with his depthless eyes, watching Keith as he sat in his chair and drew air in and out of his lungs.

“I’d let him,” Keith said back, getting up from his chair and moving to kneel in front of Lance. “If he did, I’d let him.”

Lance’s lips cracked into a smile. “He wants to kiss you, too. I’ve never kissed anyone, all my old vessels were too boring. Lance hasn’t kissed anyone, either. Maybe I could help him practice?”

Keith tipped his head to the side, studying Lance’s face.

Keith wanted to run his fingers over Lance’s figure, wanted to trace his black veins, wanted suck on his neck until he had black marks, too. Keith wanted to kiss Lance’s cracked lips, wanted to lick into his inky mouth and taste it, wanted to dip his fingers in the black ink and draw patterns all over Lance’s smooth skin.

Keith wanted Lance, but this was not Lance. Keith had to make sure Lance knew.

“Can he hear me?” Keith asked.

“I can deliver a message. Why? You have something to say?” Lance smirked, the corner of his mouth twitching up.

“I want him to know that I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, that I’m not just doing it because he can’t control what he does, because _you_ want me to. I want him to know that I want to taste him, and touch him, and that this isn’t him, but I’m gonna do everything I can to get that chance, to kiss  _him_ , the right way. Will you tell him, make sure he knows?

“He heard. He knows.” Lance said, tilting his head to the side, a grin on his lips.

Keith reached into the cell then, resting the tips of his fingers on Lance’s cold cheek before dragging them down to grip Lance’s jaw. Keith tugged Lance’s face closer as Lance’s hand rose to snake around his neck, fingers weaving into his hair.

When Keith kissed Lance, it tasted like blood. When Keith drug his tongue through the ink in Lance’s mouth, it tasted like blood and felt like blood and smelled like blood, too. When Keith bit into Lance’s cracked, stained lips, they tasted like blood just like everything else, and Keith found that he didn’t mind the taste of blood, not when it was Lance’s.

When Lance gripped Keith’s hair in his fingers, and when Lance’s body shuttered as Keith smeared the inky blood across his chest, and when Lance’s tongue danced around in his mouth and flit across his teeth and down his throat, Keith savored the feeling. Keith told himself to wait, to hold himself back for the day that it could happen for real, restrained himself.

But he let himself enjoy it.

Keith let himself push his fingers into Lance’s hair, into Lance’s mouth, into Lance’s skin, let himself drag his inky tongue along the roof of Lance’s mouth, let himself swallow the noises that came from the back of Lance’s throat.

And then, Keith let himself pull away, let himself drag his arm across the ink on his lips, and let himself run his eyes over Lance’s flushed body again as he struggled to control his breath, as he struggled to banish the taste of blood from his mouth.

“Make sure Lance knows that was a promise,” Keith said before he turned and left the room, locking the door behind him.

* * *

When Keith came to the lab, asking Pidge to watch Lance on the cameras for a little while, Pidge didn’t think much of it.

But now, as she listened to Lance laugh and sob and scream and whisper and mumble to himself, all alone in the floor of his cell, Pidge understood why Keith wanted to leave.

The black ink was smeared all along Lance’s body, dripping from his chin to add to the mess in the floor, leaking from his mouth as if the sounds from his throat helped push it out.

Pidge didn’t want to be in charge of watching Lance anymore.

Pidge begged Keith to come back inside her head, wondered where he’d gone, tried to remember what time he’d left, when he’d told her to take over.

It felt like it had been a long time, but Pidge couldn’t be sure.

Eventually, when Lance’s cries had quieted to whimpers and he was back to sitting calmly instead of tearing at his skin and his hair and his clothes, Pidge left the lab and made her way through the halls to the bottom of the ship, where Lance was being kept.

The halls were quiet until Pidge arrived at the dungeon door and opened it up.

The noises falling from Lance’s ruined lips were a lot louder in person, but they quieted as soon as Pidge stepped into Lance’s line of sight.

Lance’s face split into his signature dark grin, the black ink pouring down his face with the action. “Hello.”

Pidge nodded in answer, hesitantly sitting in the chair that Keith had left behind.

“Lance’s head is an interesting place to be,” Lance commented, staring at Pidge with his black, black eyes. “When I first took over, I was taken aback by the sheer amount of fear inside this skull of his. Thought maybe he was overdramatic, a bit of a crybaby. But, from what I’ve seen, his fears are pretty legitimate.”

Pidge shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. “What is he afraid of, then?”

“A lot of things. Well, I guess fear isn’t _all_ of it. Lance is more… intimidated. Everyone else on this ship is so _talented_ , so good at something or other, but, he really isn’t good for much, is he?”

“He is,” Pidge argued, sniffing.

“Really? For what?”

Pidge thought for a minute. “He’s good at cheering us up. He’s… funny. Entertaining.”

Lance laughed, throwing his head back, ink dripping into his hair. “How trivial.”

Pidge frowned, tightening her grip on her sides but keeping quiet.

Pidge wasn’t sure why she came down here, but suddenly, she wished she hadn’t.

“You wouldn’t need Lance to cheer you up if you had your family back,” Lance said absently, staring off into space. Pidge tensed, turning to look at him slowly.

Lance was right, technically. Her family had always been her cheerleaders, and had always supported her, had helped her when she needed it, had been proud of her when she didn’t. They always knew how to cheer her up, better than even Lance.

If they were around…

Pidge didn’t like to think that maybe it was like that for everyone. That if they weren’t in space, if they weren’t pulled away from their families, if they weren’t encouraged to become a cohesive unit and get along, that maybe no one would need Lance, that maybe no one would want him around. That maybe Lance was just a replacement for the people they _really_ wanted to have.

Lance just sat there and grinned at her, like he knew what she was thinking.

Maybe he did.

Was it true?

Was Lance just Team Voltron’s collective plan b?

Pidge got up and left.

* * *

“What are we gonna do about Lance?” Shiro asked, raking his hand through his hair.

Hunk let out a distressed noise from across the room.  He didn’t like it when they mentioned Lance, refused to see him. The others had tried to respect his wishes, but they had to breach the subject at some point.

“Keith said he had a plan,” Pidge told them, remembering her brief conversation with Keith as he told her to watch Lance over the cameras.

Allura and Shiro looked her way, faces lit with surprise and worry at the same time.

“He didn’t tell me about having a plan,” Shiro said slowly. Pidge shrugged, wringing her hands together. Keith never told her not to tell the others, so it was okay, right?

“Yeah, he came by the lab and asked me to watch Lance while he was gone.”

“Did he say where he was going?” Allura cut in. Pidge shook her head.

“Has he come back yet?” Shiro continued. Pidge shook her head again. “Then, who’s watching Lance?”

“I am,” Pidge said, tapping the frame of her glasses with her nail. “I figured out how to project the camera feed onto the lens of my glasses. He’s doing fine, just kind of laying on the floor and inking everywhere.”

Shiro sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Did he tell you anything else about his plan?”

“No.” Pidge frowned, kicking herself for not asking him more before he left. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

“I hope,” Shiro said dryly.

“We can try the comms,” Allura said, moving to switch them on. “Keith? Can you hear us? Where are you?”

“I’m back in the castle, on my way to the control room,” Keith answered a tick later, his breath ragged sounding.

“Where were you?” Shiro said after a second too long.

“I’ll tell you more when I get there,” Keith answered vaguely. “Don’t worry.”

So they stood and waited, facing the door, watching Keith’s red dot as it traipsed closer to the room they were in.

When Keith finally slid the doors open, he had his helmet on, but Pidge could see from here, could see from the backs of his hands.

“Keith? What did you _do_?” Pidge whispered, backing up a step. Keith yanked off his helmet, his face a mirror image of Lance’s.

Black ink spilled out of Keith’s helmet as he let it dangle from his fingertips, and black ink spilled from between his teeth as his lips cracked into a grin, something so out of place on Keith’s face. The darkness was a stark contrast to Keith’s pale skin, and the eyes and the ink and the veins and the _black_ seemed to cut into Keith far sharper than they did with Lance.

“What the _fuck_ , Keith?” Shiro spat, his eyes wide in disbelief.

“I said not to worry, didn’t I? I have a plan. We have an agreement, the beast and I.” As soon as the words were out of Keith’s mouth, his eyes flicked to a shade darker and his grin sharpened, an ungodly laugh ripping its way out of Keith’s throat.

Pidge couldn’t decide who was worse this way, Keith or Lance.

Then, Keith’s eyes brightened slightly, and the grin fell to something more humane, something more natural as they continued to stare at him.

“I’m still in control,” Keith told them. “and I’m gonna save Lance. I just need you guys to trust me, and give me some time and some privacy. It could get ugly.”

Hunk whimpered as Shiro shook his head, bewildered by Keith’s stupidity. “And what if it doesn’t work? What if we lose _both of you_ _?_ ”

“Then you lose both of us,” Keith answered, leveling his depthless gaze on Shiro. “No matter what happens, I’m not letting Lance go through it alone, just because we didn’t listen to him when he warned us and didn’t save him when we still had the time. If he goes down, I’m going down with him.”

Shiro stared at him, trying not to shy away from his heavy gaze, trying to pretend that Keith wasn’t scaring him shitless right now, for several reasons.

“Fine. We’ll give you one day to get that _bitch_ out of Lance, and out of you, and if you don’t succeed, then we get to do it our way.” Shiro didn’t know what their way _was_ , but it certainly didn’t involve even more of the initial problem.

“Fine. See you tomorrow.” Keith gave them the most terrifying grin that had ever stretched across his face before he turned and left the room, a thin trail of ink following him out.

“Lance and Keith are gonna have to mop this whole castle when this is over,” Coran said, staring at the ink in distaste. “I’m adding it to the chore chart.”

* * *

_Red didn’t want to go any farther, not when they couldn’t see. But something knew they were there, he could feel it pulling on him, and Keith was confident that they would get where they were going._

_For a tick, when the lights inside of Red were engulfed in black, Keith considered turning around, considered going back, finding another way to pry the darkness from Lance’s mind._

_But Keith didn’t think there_ was _another way, so he kept going, kept flying towards the surface, even if every part of him was telling him it would be the last thing he did._

_When the whispers started, Keith ignored it, and when the empty dark threatened to crush him, threatened to rip the air from his lungs, Keith grit his teeth and pushed forward._

_If Lance could do this, scared and alone, calling for help, clueless as to what was happening, then Keith could do it, knowing full well what was waiting for him when he reached the bottom._

_“Welcome to planet Zatvor.” the voices hissed in his mind as Red came to a stop. Keith growled, standing up and taking somewhat confident strides out of Red’s cockpit and onto the surface below._

_Keith didn’t take a lot of extra time to look around when the walls around him started to glow, even though the light was unusual and caught his attention and fought to keep it._

_Keith was here for a reason, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted. He wasn’t sure how long the beast would keep Lance alive, wasn’t sure how much fear Lance had left for the beast to eat._

_When the tunnel reached a dead end and the lights faded back into darkness, Keith tried not to be afraid. He knew what would happen, what was coming. He would be okay. He had to be._

_“Welcome to planet Zatvor.” the voices said again, as if he didn’t already know where he was, as if they hadn’t already told him once before._

_The voices made Keith’s mind stutter, the way they sounded striking Keith as rather unnatural. God, he hated this place. Keith didn’t want to imagine what it had been like when Lance was here._

_“I’m here to make a deal,” Keith said, anxious to get to the point and get out, get back to the ship and back to Lance._

_“A deal, hmm? What kind of deal?” Keith could feel the darkness pressing in, pressing closer, dragging itself across his skin as he stood._

_“I’ve been afraid for most of my life. I can’t think of a single day I’ve existed that I haven’t been afraid, that I haven’t lived in fear of several things at once. I know you like that sort of thing, that you thrive off of it. So, you can have it. I’ll let you in, let you eat every morsel of fear in my mind, if you do a few things for me in return.”_

_“And, what would you have me do, Keith?” the darkness asked, curling around his bicep and giving a tentative squeeze._

_“If I let you in, you have to let me have control of my mind. Full control. And, if I let you in, you can’t kill me when you’re done. You have to let me walk away,_ alive. _Lastly, I have a friend, Lance. He’s currently possessed, by one of you. I need him back, need the beast out of him, need him alive, and I want you to help me.”_

_“The first two are easy, done. The last? Helping you banish a beast from another’s mind? Impossible.”_

_“I have a plan. I can do it, I just need you to give me a connection to his brain, let me talk to him without the beast hearing. Can you do that?”_

_“Of course.”_

_“Then, do we have a deal?”_

_The darkness was silent, slithering across Keith’s skin as he breathed, in and out, in and out._

_“Yes, we have a deal.” the voice answered, before shoving its fingers down Keith’s throat and nestling down, deep inside._

* * *

Lance was laughing when Keith came to a stop in front of his cell. Keith wanted to laugh with him. It felt different, with a beast inside. Keith felt powerful. Keith felt evil. Keith didn’t know how he should feel, but he liked it.  

Keith could feel the sluggish movement of his blackened blood through his veins, and Keith could feel the very same blood in his mouth, on his tongue, on his skin, and Keith could feel the pressure behind his eyes, the presence inside his head, the power inside his limbs. Keith could feel the perpetual amusement, the smug nature, the _fear_ in others, and he finally understood why Lance was grinning all the time.

Keith could feel the fear of the other paladins when he stopped by to talk to them, and he wanted to unravel it from their frames like loose strings, wanted to root around inside their heads to find more, wanted to wrap it around his fingers and bring it to his lips and shove it down his throat, into his mind.

Keith wanted to laugh. He settled for a cutting grin.

“I see you’ve brought one of my brothers to see me,” Lance said with a grin. Keith could feel the amusement rolling off of him in smothering waves and Keith drank it in, let it smother his tongue and loved the way it tasted.

“I have.”

“And, why, might I ask, have you done such a thing?”

“I’m going to take Lance back.”

Lance laughed, more demonic and haunting than Keith had heard it thus far.

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Enjoy the show, then,” Keith said, shrugging as his mind traded places with the beast. Keith could feel the connection between his mind and Lance’s, could feel the darkness looking around in his head, could feel the beast take over his lips as Keith reached out to Lance, as Keith stepped into the cell and closed the door behind him, coming to sit next to him.

As soon as Lance’s mind let him inside, Keith was calling out for him, looking for him. For the first time during this whole experience, Keith was glad Lance wasn’t very good at keeping things out.

_“Lance?”_

_“Keith? Keith? I-is that you? That can’t be you. How did you get here? You can’t be here. What did you do? What did you_ do _, Keith?” Lance’s voice sounded raw, as if he’d been screaming, and Keith wondered if it hurt for him to talk, what Lance could feel._

_“It doesn’t matter,” Keith said back. “I’m here now, and I’m gonna get the beast out of your head, okay?”_

_“How?” Lance asked. If Keith focused, he could see Lance’s frantic features, could feel his body trembling, stuck somewhere in his mind. “I can’t get it out. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard. I’ve yelled and screamed and pushed and pulled and it won’t_ leave _I can’t get it to_ leave _it won’t get_ out _-”_

_Keith reached out and gripped Lance’s jaw, his fingers digging into his skin. “Lance. Look at me.” Outside of his head, Keith could feel Lance’s body shutter, could feel his gaze land on him as Lance looked from inside his mind. “Don’t freak out, okay?”_

_“What am I supposed to do then, Keith? How do I make it leave?”_

_Keith pushed his hand across Lance’s jaw roughly, sliding across his skin until he reached his hair and latched on tight, staring him in the eyes._

_“Do you remember when I kissed you? And I told you I would do it again, as soon as the beast was out of you, as soon as you were free again?” Lance nodded, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed._

_“Do you want me to do it again? To kiss you again?”_

_“Yes.” Lance breathed._

_“Then you have to focus. You have to push back at the right spot. Listen to me. Follow my directions. Feel around, find the place in your mind where the darkness has latched on, find the seam between you and the beast. Can you feel it?” Lance was silent as he looked, as he felt around, searching for the place where two had become one in his brain._

_Keith had had a lot of time to play around back in the cave when the beast was devouring his fear, and while the darkness was distracted, Keith discovered it was quite easy to pry a beast from one’s mind, so long as one focused on the right spot._

_Luckily, Keith knew just where that was._

_Keith could tell Lance was getting frustrated, so he tugged on his short strands of hair, smoothing over his throat with his other hand. “Can you imagine my hands, all over you? Can you imagine my tongue in your mouth, my hands in your hair, my hands wherever you want them?”_

_Lance whined, his eyes sliding closed as he continued to search around._

_“I found it,” Lance said after a few more ticks, his eyes opening again. Keith savored the blue that was on display, the color that had been gone from Lance’s eyes for far too long._

_“Dig your fingers up under it, get a good grip on the edges. Can you do that for me?” Lance nodded, his fingers twitching as he dug them under the seam. “Now,_ pull _.”_

_Lance let out a growl as he yanked on the blackness that had settled over his brain, and Keith could feel Lance’s muscles tense as he did._

_“It didn’t work.” Lance yelped, his fingers loosening._

_“Don’t let go. Do it again. While you do, imagine my lips, my tongue, my hands, my skin, my hips, my thighs, all your favorite parts of me, yours for the taking. Would you like that, Lance?”_

_Lance shivered, licking his lips and nodding his head as his eyes closed again and he pulled, his arms flexing as he exerted his force on the thing in his mind. A strained laugh left Lance’s throat outside of their heads, and Keith could feel the shift of Lance’s atmosphere, could feel fear and hope and arousal flood in to mix with the amusement, mix with the confidence._

_“One more time, Lance,” Keith instructed, tightening his grip on Lance’s skin as he spoke. “One more time.”_

_Lance grit his teeth and pulled with everything he had, the darkness groaning as Lance forced it from its place. Lance’s fear was gone, replaced with the beast’s fear instead as it began to coil and pile into itself, having been dislodged from its grip on Lance’s thoughts._

_Lance wrapped the tendrils of darkness around his fingers and drew them in, up and down his arms, until every last bit was under his command, under his control, and he forced it out, away, back to the black planet from which it came._

_Keith watched with depthless eyes as the shadows poured from Lance’s throat and through the cracks in the castle, then watched with his mind as they shifted through space and back into their lightless cave of origin._

_Lance lay on the ground of the cell, chest heaving, skin smeared with black blood, eyes trained on Keith. As Keith looked him over, he could still see the black veins filled with blood, could still see the black infiltrating the blue of Lance’s iris’s, even though the whites of his eyes had returned. And when Lance opened his mouth to speak, Keith could still see the ink of his tongue, several layers deep, set into the tissue itself._

_Did it work?_

_“Is it gone?” Keith asked, his voice almost a growl. Lance nodded dazedly, reaching up a hand to swipe at the ink on Keith’s chin._

_“Keith…” Lance said with his pretty brown lips, features pulled tight in concern._

_“Don’t worry. I’m coming.”_

_Keith dug around in his mind, drug his fingers up under the ledge, heaved once, and watched absently as the darkness left him, disappearing from his sight and into space._

* * *

When Lance dragged himself to his knees and crawled towards Keith, the first thing he saw was his eyes. Their purplish-grey color was still gone, still missing, still black, although the white had returned, the stark contrast almost more unsettling than the complete black had been. Next, Lance saw his veins, laced under his skin and a shade lighter than black, and when he looked at his own hands, he saw that his looked the same way.

If the beast was gone, why had its coloring stayed?

Keith stared at the ceiling until Lance put his fingers on his face, his attention snapping towards Lance in a heartbeat.

“Are mine…?” Lance asked, smoothing the pads of his fingers over Keith’s eyelids, down his cheekbones, over his lips. Keith nodded, breath soft against Lance’s thin digits as he stared at Lance’s face, eyes zeroed in on Lance’s lips as he spoke to him.  

“Are you okay?” Keith asked, his hand coming up to cup Lance’s cheek, to hold him there. Lance nodded, leaning into Keith’s palm, ignoring the fact that his tongue was black and his own probably was too.

“I’m okay,” Lance said, tracing over Keith’s throat. “Are you?” Keith nodded quickly, his eyes sliding shut as his fingers slid up to tangle his fingers in Lance’s hair.

“I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re both okay, everyone’s okay.” Lance stared at Keith, sprawled out on the floor, his hair spread out around his head and matted with black blood, and was hit with how grateful he was that Keith had shown him how to win, that he was still around to appreciate Keith like this, soft and gentle and _his_.

Lance didn’t want to die, not now, and Keith had made sure he didn’t have to.

Lance wanted to thank him, and he had a certain method in mind. He didn’t think his jumbled words would get his message across the way he wanted, and, Keith had promised him, after all.

Lance looked Keith over once more before he swiped over Keith’s bottom lip with his thumb, leaning down and replacing it with his lips, kissing Keith softly, gently, much more lovingly than he had when Lance was without control.  

Keith sighed into Lance’s mouth and opened his lips, letting Lance’s tongue slip through. The inside of Keith’s mouth was soft, warm, and Lance explored it eagerly, letting his tongue slip wherever it would fit. He licked over his teeth, over the roof of his mouth, over his tongue, until Keith was gasping into his mouth and pulling on his hair.

Lance slowly crawled over Keith’s body until they were flush, Lance hovering barely an inch above Keith’s skin, causing him to whine and pull Lance closer by his hips. Lance let his weight rest on the hard planes of Keith’s chest, his hand exploring now that it no longer had to help hold him up. Keith’s fingers flit across Lance’s exposed chest, running back up once they met the makeshift boundary his body suit made where it rested at his hips.

Lance pulled their mouths apart and let his lips drift down to the stained skin of Keith’s neck, let his mouth draw dark blood to the surface of his skin and leave pretty black bruises behind, let his thumb press into the mark as Keith squirmed beneath him. Lance wanted to see Keith with more marks, more indications that Keith was _his,_ so his mouth got to work, sucking marks up and down Keith’s pretty pale skin until Keith was pulling at his hair and dragging his lips back to his.

Keith pushed at Lance’s shoulder and sat them up slowly, careful to avoid breaking the kiss, the kiss that had now become urgent and desperate and heavy, their breaths coming quicker and their nails digging into whatever skin they could find.

Lance straddled Keith’s hips as they sat up, heads tilting to slot their lips together just the right way, in a way that was _so good_ , in a way that Lance could’ve never imagined, no matter how many times he dreamed about it in his head. The real thing was so much better.

The kiss was messy and abrupt and pushy and blunt, and it left Lance gasping for breath and grinding down into Keith’s lap and tugging on his hair every time Keith sent shockwaves of pleasure through his body. Keith wasn’t fairing much better, little gasps and moans and whines escaping from the back of his throat every time Lance bit his bottom lip or sucked on his tongue or ground his hips just right.

Lance and Keith traded dominance back and forth, adopting a steady rhythm of their hips and their lips and their mindset as their hands explored and scratched and tugged and gripped without mercy, without thought.

Eventually, Keith pulled back, slowly lowering Lance onto his back as he settled over him, between his legs, and ran his hungry eyes over Lance’s form. Lance eyed the spit smeared across Keith’s red lips with far more interest than he should have, his dick twitching at the sight. Lance’s eyes had even more to explore when Keith pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it behind him lazily, a dark grin on his lips as he watched Lance gulp. Lance couldn’t see Keith’s desire, couldn’t separate it from the darkness already staining his eyes, but he could _feel it_ , could grasp it in his mind and his thoughts and his emotions like it was his own, and it fueled the fire in his gut.

Keith wanted him _bad_.

Lance hoped Keith could feel his, just the same, just as desperate.

Keith’s hands smoothed over Lance’s tan torso slowly, pressing almost hard enough to be painful, making Lance’s spine bow and his stomach sink and skin bunch beneath his calloused palms as they went. Lance moaned low in this throat, wanting Keith’s hands to touch him everywhere, steady enough to ground him.

Keith pulled the rest of Lance’s bodysuit away as his hands continued their path, sliding along his skin solidly, slowly, making Lance feel vulnerable and seen and appreciated and _good_ in a way he’d never felt before.

“So pretty.” Keith breathed, his eyes following his hands as they trailed down, lower and lower.

Lance hardly even registered the fact that he was fully naked while Keith was mostly dressed, because the cell floor was wet and cold beneath his skin and Keith’s hands were gripping his thighs, slipping occasionally against the blood that was now smeared across them, fingers digging in and fighting for his attention. Keith’s mouth had moved from his lips to his neck, but Lance couldn’t find it in him to complain. Lance wanted Keith to mark him up, just like he had.

His back arched, chest pushing against Keith’s as his teeth sunk into the juncture between Lance’s shoulder and neck, marring the soft flesh there before licking over it softly and sucking gently, just enough to pull a moan from the back of his throat.

Lance whined Keith’s name as Keith nipped and licked and sucked his way across his neck and collarbones, pausing to press kisses to his jaw and behind his ears before dipping his head to mark Lance again, spurred on by the noises leaking from Lance’s lips and his desperate fingers in his hair.

When Keith was satisfied with his work, he pulled back to look Lance over, his eyes flashing. Lance let his fingers fall from Keith’s hair, moving to grip his sides instead as he hummed in appreciation. Lance could feel the spike of possession in Keith’s emotions and it washed him in pleasure, his spine shuddering as Keith kept his eyes on him.

Keith put a hand on Lance’s chest, tentatively flicking the pad of a finger over his nipple, smirking at the reaction he got. Keith then pressed his palm flat against the dip of Lance’s chest, tapping the beat of Lance’s heart into the soft skin of his thigh where Keith’s other hand still rested.

“Mine?” Keith asked, his voice huskier than Lance was expecting, sending a rush of heat straight to his gut. Keith’s eyes locked onto Lance’s face, his gaze predatory despite the darkness lurking there.

Lance nodded rapidly, digging his nails into the soft skin of Keith’s hips. “Yours.”

Keith hummed in pleasure, finally turning his attention to where Lance was close to begging him to go. Lance’s cock was harder than he ever remembered it being, resting against his hip and throbbing, aching to be touched. Keith pulled off the rest of his clothes fluidly before he settled between his legs gingerly, the feeling of his desperation rushing through Lance like a tidal wave. Lance had never felt anyone want something before, had never felt anyone want _him_ before, and the feeling of it was dizzying.

Lance could feel Keith’s emotions like a weight in the back of the head, and it was ten percent impatience, ten percent relief, and eighty percent desperate, needy arousal. Knowing what Keith was thinking was driving him insane, making the experience ten times better, and Lance was grateful for whatever the beast had done to allow him the pleasure of peeking into Keith’s head.

Keith’s tongue drug from his navel to his hip bone, lips sucking a bruise into the supple skin there before kissing across his body to suck a matching mark into the other one. Then Keith’s teeth were nipping across his skin and his lips were kissing across his thighs and sucking marks there, too, littering his smooth brown skin with dark splotches of pleasure.

Keith laved his tongue across a bruise on Lance’s thigh one more time before he drew his attention upwards, the feeling of his need flooding Lance’s head and making him moan breathily. Keith gripped Lance in his hand, stroking him curiously as his eyes scraped over Lance from his new position between his bruised thighs. He eventually caught Lance’s gaze and held it as he replaced his nimble fingers with his swollen lips, sinking down onto Lance slowly, oh so slowly.

“ _Keith._ ” Lance arched into his mouth, whining as Keith pinned his hips with one hand and worked his bottom half with the other, eyes never once leaving Lance’s. Lance could feel his limbs going numb, could feel his fists clenching and unclenching uselessly at his sides, could feel his breath ripping through his throat as it struggled to be heard over the sound of his gasps and moans.

Keith’s eyes sharpened as the noises fell from Lance’s lips more freely now, and before Lance had time to prepare himself, Keith was pulling off of him fluidly before sucking him back into his mouth, going down until his nose rested in the coarse hair at his abdomen and Lance could feel his tip brushing against the back of Keith’s throat.

Lance let out a broken moan, hips bucking minutely as Keith swallowed around him, humming encouragingly. Keith bobbed his head slightly a few times before he was pulling back, dragging his tongue along the underside of Lance’s cock as he went. He then switched his focus to Lance’s tip, tongue circling the head as he jerked Lance at an agonizingly slow pace.

Lance ground his hips forward as much as Keith’s grip would allow, hands scrabbling across the floor before giving up and burying themselves in Keith’s hair, gripping the sticky strands tightly.

“Please, Keith, please-” Lance begged, back arching desperately as Keith wrapped his lips around his tip, sucking lightly. Lance needed more friction, needed it bad. He could feel the heat in his gut, could feel the tingling in his limbs, and he wanted more, needed more.

“What, baby?” Keith purred, pulling back with a pop as his fingers flexed on Lance’s hip bone and continued the slow jerk of his cock. “Wanna fuck my mouth?” Lance moaned loudly, nodding his head up and down shakily and rocking his ass against the floor in a poor attempt to find more friction, fingers aching where they gripped Keith’s hair and toes curled to the point of painful.

Keith put his mouth back on Lance, jaw slackening as he opened his throat to accommodate Lance’s cock again, hands finding purchase in the malleable flesh of Lance’s thighs, holding on tight.

Lance groaned as Keith’s lips came to a stop, his eyes flickering up to meet Lance’s and giving him permission to move. Lance rolled his hips experimentally, gasping at the feeling of Keith’s hot wet mouth around him. Eventually, his movements sped up, and Lance forced himself to keep eye contact with Keith as he let himself push closer and closer to the edge.

Keith’s hands slid from his thighs to his ass, kneading his cheeks before grabbing them tight and pulling Lance farther into his mouth, holding him there for a few seconds as Lance’s hips stuttered and jerked into his tight heat. Then Keith let him go and bobbed his head a little to encourage Lance’s hips to move again, his fingertips drifting across Lance’s sweaty skin to grip his hips.

Lance watched the muscles under his skin ripple as he thrust hard into Keith’s mouth, watched the spit and precum dribble out of Keith’s mouth and down his chin, watched Keith’s eyelashes flutter and the flush crawl across his cheeks, and watched Keith’s hand slip from Lance’s skin and disappear between his own legs, Keith’s moan sending shivers up Lance’s spine and causing him to echo the noise.

Lance’s hips sped up, losing all rhyme and reason as pleasure coiled in his gut and heat spread through his limbs, tensing his muscles and squeezing the breath from his lungs. Lance began to babble, the noises and moans and words leaving his lips without his permission, mixing in the air with the obscene sound of Keith’s mouth on him and Keith’s hand running over himself and both of their strained breathing. Lance tugged at Keith’s hair as his body shuttered, his mouth unable to form a proper warning for his fast approaching orgasm.

Keith seemed to glean the message from Lance’s whines, however, and loosed his jaw even more, if possible, tongue sliding along Lance’s sensitive skin as he bucked once, twice, and shot down Keith’s lax throat, hips stuttering as he pulled on Keith’s hair so hard he worried he might yank it out, his entire body tensing and arching and curling in on itself as far as it could go.

Keith didn’t seem to mind, moaning around his cock as his hand continued to pump himself, his tongue gently cleaning Lance up as he milked him through his intense orgasm.

Lance was pulled from the haze of his high at the sound of Keith reaching his own, and Lance begged his shaking limbs to move, to pull Keith closer, to replace Keith’s hand with his own as he came across the puddle of inky black blood slicking the floor.

Lance pulled Keith’s lips to his as Keith collapsed on top of him, his skin warm and sweaty and speckled with blood, smooth against Lance’s curious palms. Keith wrapped his arms around Lance as Lance shifted against the unforgiving floor, wincing as he did.

“Next time we do this,” Lance said as he pulled away, his voice shattering the silence that their ragged breathing had made, his own arms lifting to fold around Keith’s form and hold him close. “I vote we don’t do it on the floor of a cell.”

Keith laughed, the sound darker than Lance remembered it, nuzzling his face into Lance’s neck and tightening his grip on his torso.

“Okay,” Keith agreed easily, voice slightly muffled by Lance’s skin. “I’m sure we can make that happen.”


	2. All Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith turned and look at Lance, the darkness of his eyes flickering behind the glamour. Lance knew that look, knew what Keith wanted. If the paladins would not accept them as unchanged and would not listen to the warnings they could now provide them with, then they would have to pretend to be the monsters they already thought they were and take matters into their own hands. They would not, however, let innocent people die because of their team’s foolish mistrust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a hot minute but uhhh, let's just ignore how long this has taken, shall we ?
> 
> hope you enjoy, don't be afraid to leave comments and kudos if you want :))

Lance didn’t want to face the other paladins. He wasn’t sure what the beast had told them or how the beast had made them feel, and while Keith assured him that it was nothing to worry about and that they would just be happy to have him back, Lance was still worried. 

Eventually, after hours of kisses and cuddles and pep talks, Keith managed to convince Lance to go and see everyone, mostly because he told him that the others would hunt them down after twenty-four hours had passed anyway, based on the deal Keith had struck with Shiro. 

Keith dug the key to the cell out of his pocket as Lance stretched his sore limbs and pulled his bodysuit up to rest on his shoulders, stalking around the small cell to gather up the rest of his armor that he’d tossed aside. 

Keith swung the cell door open and led Lance out of the dungeon sector and through the halls, each step they took only adding to the anxiety rolling in the pit of his stomach. Lance needed a distraction, so he watched Keith’s back as he walked, watched the muscles under his skin as he moved and watched the darkness of his veins as they cut across his skin and pulsed in time with his heart. 

As hard as he tried to ignore it, Lance felt the apprehension long before they arrived at the control room door.

From the look on Keith’s face when he turned, so did he.

“I told you this wasn’t a good idea,” Lance whispered, frowning, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You can’t avoid them forever. Besides, it’s not just you. It’s both of us. Plus, you get bonus points, ‘cause you’re not the idiot who went and got a beast on purpose.” Keith told him, reaching out to hook his thumb in Lance’s mouth. Lance let his blackened tongue run over the pad of Keith’s finger before he bit down gently, shrugging.

“But what if they hate me, or blame me, or something?” Keith dipped and curved his thumb a little farther until his nail pressed into the soft flesh lining the bottom of Lance’s mouth, the pain immediate and sharp enough to grab Lance’s attention, just bad enough to ground him, to help him focus. 

“You never know ‘till you try.” 

Lance sighed, Keith’s finger dropping from his mouth as he nodded, shuffling closer to the door and watching as it slid open, much faster than he wanted. The room beyond was silent and Lance was afraid to look up from the ground, letting Keith grab his hand and drag him forward until he was several steps into the room and the door had closed behind them. 

Lance could feel their fear, and it lingered, bitter on his tongue. He wished he could spit it out. 

He could almost smell it, could almost taste it on his black, ruined tongue, could almost pluck it out of the air and cup it in his palms. He could do the same with the anger and disappointment radiating from the boy next to him, but even though he could feel them, he couldn’t tell who Keith’s emotions were directed towards: himself or Lance or the still-silent people standing in the room with them. 

Hunk was the first person to break the silence, the peacemaker in him taking the lead where the others could, or would, not. “Welcome back, Lance. You too, Keith. We were worried about you guys.”

Lance looked up then, his features as blank as he could manage, and let his eyes roam over the tight group of people in front of them, all huddled together as if under attack. He let his eyes drift to Keith as well, let the adoration show in his eyes for a split second before he cleared them again, promising himself that he could obsess about Keith’s cute scowl later. Keith seemed to pick up on his slight shift in mood, though, and shot him an amused warning look before returning his attention to the paladins, who were now shifting uncomfortably at the lack of reaction, the lack of response. 

“You guys  _ are  _ better, right? Like, the beasts are gone and everything?” Pidge asked, her voice small. 

“Yes,” Lance affirmed simply.

“Why do you ask?” Keith ventured, his voice almost a purr but his face as blank as Lance hoped his own was. 

“You still… you know, _look_ _like you’re infected._ So I just wanted to, um, make sure. If you guys don’t mind, we might stick you in the healing pods and run some tests just to be one hundred percent…” Pidge trailed off as Keith and Lance continued to stare at her, fear licking at the edges of her discomfort. 

“That’s fine,” Keith said.

“Then your first test will be to retrieve the lions,” Allura told them, her voice louder than Pidge’s but still as hesitant, still as unsure. Lance wanted to strangle them. “Shiro? Would you like to take them down to the surface?” 

It was apparent to everyone in the room, even those who were unable to detect others’ emotions, that Shiro did  _ not  _ want to take them, but he nodded anyway. 

The walk to the hangar was silent, as was the period of time it took them to suit up, the entire ride down to the planet, their departure (Shiro stayed in Black a good hundred feet away from the atmosphere, just to be safe), the return to their lions, and their return to the ship soon after. Shiro did not comment on the fact that the lions had let Lance and Keith in, nor did he give any indication that he was aware of what this meant, what this proved. 

He made no comment on their return at all, actually, and even thousands of feet apart and seated in different lions, Lance could feel Shiro’s distrust, his fear. Lance narrowly avoided calling him a hypocrite, narrowly avoided saying something he’d regret. 

Keith decided to acknowledge his awareness of Lance’s agitation and gave him a brief kiss once they had landed the lions on the ship, a kiss that was unseen by the others but did wonders for Lance’s mood. Keith didn’t have to say anything to convey his feelings to Lance, so he didn’t, just placed his gloved hand on Lance’s jawbone and rubbed his thumb gently over his cheek before stepping away and beckoning for Lance to follow. 

The retrieval of the lions had calmed the other paladins a little bit, but things weren’t even close to how they’d been before. Everything the others said was careful and calculated, far from the carefree and easy way Lance was used to. He missed it terribly. He wanted to go back in time and change what had happened, even if it wasn’t really his fault. He never wanted to make his family uncomfortable around him, uncomfortable  _ because  _ of him. 

When they returned to the control room, Shiro not far behind, they were each handed a mop by Coran and told to clean up the black “ink” they’d dripped everywhere. Lance decided against telling them it was actually their blood and got to work, watching Keith’s back again as he walked back to the dungeon sector to clean the cell Lance had been kept in. Lance didn’t want him to leave, didn’t want him to be that far away, but he took comfort in the fact that he could still feel him, could still feel the things he felt, even that far away.

Keith turned and blew him a kiss before he turned the corner and disappeared, trailing the mop behind him. Lance smiled to himself as he followed the trail of black dots across the floor, doing his best to wipe them away completely. It took some work because they’d dried, but it wasn’t the worst thing Coran had made him clean.

Once the hallways, the lounge, and the control room had been cleaned and taken care of, Lance waited for Keith to finish up in the dungeon before they were each put into healing pods. 

The last thing Lance saw before the cold blue took over his thoughts was Pidge’s worried face, and the last thing he felt was their desperation, each and every one of them hoping that the healing pods could fix whatever problem they thought Lance and Keith still had. 

* * *

Pidge didn’t want to be afraid of them. It  _ killed  _ her to fear them, but she couldn’t help it. She’d seen space change people, she’d seen what different species and races were capable of, and everything about what had happened terrified her, especially since they still looked so… wrong.

Even after a few hours in the healing pods, they were still laced with darkness, their eyes and their tongues and their veins a thick black that Pidge had never encountered before this planet and the beasts that lived there. It just really fucking scared her. She wanted them to be okay and she wanted them to be safe and she wanted them to be back to normal, and she wanted to trust them when they said that they were, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t allow herself to let her guard down like that. 

Besides, even if Lance and Keith were technically okay again, they were still different from how they were before. She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t put her finger on it, but they seemed less alive, almost. More docile, like a predator patiently waiting for its prey to make a mistake. She’d done numerous tests on them and studied their blood samples and poured over the information from the healing pods, but she couldn’t find anything visibly wrong with any of it. That didn’t change the fact that they obviously weren’t the same, and the fact that Pidge couldn’t find the source of the change only served to concern her even further. 

She didn’t understand how they were  _ like  _ this.

Lance and Keith had been sitting out on missions for the past few weeks, at Allura’s request, and it felt weird without them there, but Pidge knew she’d probably feel worse if they were there. She just didn’t really trust them anymore. She couldn’t. 

She’d seen them together in the halls, seen them pin each other to the walls by their throats, seen them grip each other’s skin hard enough to draw blood and never act like it was strange. She’d watched them laugh at absolutely nothing like it was the funniest thing in the world and she’d watched them stare into space with a sickening grin on their face and she’d watched them pull at their hair like there was something inside they were desperately trying to pull out. None of it was normal.

They never argued anymore. They sparred together, more and more, pushed each other to the breaking point and then kept going. They were always together, always the same, always a pair, acting and moving and breathing the exact same way. It was terrifying.  

Pidge didn’t want to be afraid of them, she really didn’t. But, she couldn’t help but feel like they weren’t really Lance and Keith anymore, and that there was nothing she could do to fix it.

* * *

The healing pods didn’t help. They didn’t change anything. Lance and Keith still looked evil, and the others still didn’t trust them, even though the healing pods said there was nothing wrong with them.

It had been weeks since they’d been inside them, and since Allura didn’t want them on missions yet, they had a lot to free time to roam around the castle, to figure out what was happening with them, to worry about how to fix them and their family.

Overall, Keith didn’t feel that different. He could sense other’s emotions, sure, and he looked like a freak, but a lot of things about him were still the same. Every few days, however, it was like Keith lost his hold on what made him the same, like the lines between human and monster blurred just a little bit more and Keith became a harsher, more insane version of himself. 

Lance was the same way, and neither of them knew why it happened, or why it happened to both of them at the same time. It hadn’t really proved to be a problem yet, they’d never threatened anyone or anything, but it was still strange, still unsettling. It made Keith wonder what else had changed, made him wonder how much control over himself he really had. 

When they became like that (they called it their cycle), they tried to stay away from the others, but they never separated from each other. They needed each other to clear the fog in their heads and relieve the pressure in their veins and cool the heat under their skin. 

They liked to push each other against the wall and dig their fingers into each other’s skin until it began to bleed, black and thick and shimmering in the castle light. When their cycles came around, it was like they were on drugs and the only way to cut through the haze in their heads was pain, sharp and fast and constant. So Lance and Keith hurt each other, shuddering in pleasure as they struggled to breathe and choked on their blood and left nasty marks on their skin.

They liked it. Pleasure was pain and pain was inevitable and pain was all they wanted to feel, the only thing that brought them back to earth and let them stick around for another day. Pain was everything, the only thing they wanted other than each other. 

They laughed a lot, laughed at nothing. Something inside of Keith was perpetually amused, and his voice wanted everyone to know about it. Sometimes, he’d share a look with Lance and just begin to _laugh_ , because it was hilarious, really. The situation he was in, the way he felt, the fog in his head and the pain zapping across his nerves, all of it, _so_ _funny_. 

Keith didn’t know what was wrong with him, didn’t care. 

The others hadn’t really seen the way Lance and Keith treated each other on their cycles, and they didn’t want them to. Their insanity was for their eyes only, reserved for them to hear and feel and see. Keith rather liked it, the wild, hungry look he saw when he looked Lance in the eyes, the way it felt to know that same look was mirrored in his own. 

It had been weeks since they’d done anything but sit around and paint each other’s skin in pain, in pleasure. It’d been weeks since anyone had looked at them and seen Lance and Keith, instead of Monster One and Monster Two. It’d been weeks since they’d touched each other, since they’d indulged in a type of pleasure that wasn’t solely derived from pain. 

Keith wanted to do it again. It didn’t matter if they were on their cycle, didn’t matter if they’d just be rough and hurt each other and love every fucking second of it. The others were gone on a mission, and Keith wanted to make Lance  _ his _ . 

Keith followed the pull of Lance’s emotions through the halls, followed the steady waves of subdued anger and amused betrayal and poorly concealed need for the man who was currently trying to find him. 

Nowadays, Keith felt distant from his own emotions, and it was hard for him to figure out how he was feeling even when he could easily detect everyone else’s. Most of the time he just existed, pleasantly detached from any emotion at all. He could feel things, but they didn’t seem important, didn’t seem pressing. Lance’s emotions felt much the same, everything he felt reaching Keith in a pastel color instead of a solid, bright one, like the emotions he felt from the other paladins. Maybe there really was something wrong with them. 

The thought made him laugh.

He was still laughing when he found Lance, sprawled across a couch in the lounge. Lance looked up at him with a wide grin, a small giggle bubbling out of his throat in answer. He didn’t ask why Keith was laughing, didn’t question it. They never needed a reason to be amused now.

“Hey, baby,” Keith purred, plopping down on the couch next to Lance. “Whatcha doing?” 

“Thinkin’ about you,” Lance answered sweetly, stretching his legs into Keith’s lap. 

“What for?” Keith questioned, leaning against the back of the couch.

“It’s always been my favorite way to pass the time.” Lance shrugged, a small smile curving his lips.

“Perhaps I can suggest a new favorite?” Keith asked, his voice lilting as his hand dropped to Lance’s calf and gripped the skin tightly. Lance hummed in the back of his throat, his eyes sliding closed.

“I’m all ears.” Keith shifted out from underneath Lance’s legs before spreading them and settling in between, lowering himself until he was hovering a breath away from Lance, his eyes following the movement of Lance’s charcoal tongue as it swept over his lips. His eyes then met Lance’s as he reopened them, staring into the depthless darkness they held, the sight sending shutters down his spine. The darkness in Lance went so well with the gentle brown of his skin, and Keith was in awe of the way it looked, every single time he saw it. 

“I want to claim you, make you mine, so fucking bad. Is that okay?” Keith murmured, brushing his lips over Lance’s ear as he spoke, low and quiet and grumbly. Lance hummed, fisting handfuls of Keith’s shirt. 

“Yes. Yes, please.” Keith nosed at Lance’s neck and smiled against his warm skin, breathing in the smell of Lance (sweat, smoke, and vanilla) and Keith’s scent on Lance (oil and clean sheets and spice) and the rush of his blood just below the surface (sweet and black and thick on his tongue, his memories filling the gap where his senses lacked). Keith wanted to taste it. 

Lance’s body was already covered in scratches and cuts and bruises from the night before, when they’d laid in their bed and laughed all night long and drug every sharp thing they could find (knives, nails, screws from the walls, rocks that Lance had taken from planets, a scrap of metal that Keith had taken from a ruined ship) across every patch of exposed skin, but Keith wanted to mark him more, wanted to mark him with things that were his, like his teeth and his lips and his fingertips. 

Keith could taste how badly Lance wanted to be marked, wanted to be claimed, and Keith wanted nothing more than to be the person who did it.

Keith latched his lips onto the delicate skin of Lance’s throat and began to suck, pulling a soft noise out of Lance. Keith liked the taste of sweat on Lance’s skin, liked the subtle heat in his mouth and the feeling of flesh sliding across his teeth, across his tongue. 

“So pretty,” Keith sighed, releasing the skin with a wet noise and moving on, not stopping until Lance’s neck was riddled with teeth marks and bruises ranging from the size of his pinky nail to the combined size of the pads of his thumbs. He made sure to lick and kiss and press on all of them, until Lance was pulling his head away by yanking on his hair and pushing him off the couch, grabbing his arm to then pull him out of the room. 

Keith assumed that they were probably headed to their bedroom, but they wouldn’t make it that far. Keith had never been very good at being patient, and he wanted Lance as soon as he could have him. If that meant taking him against the wall in the middle of the hallway, then so be it. 

Keith tugged on Lance’s arm and turned to push him against the wall rather harshly, reveling in the sound Lance’s body made when it was thrown into the unforgiving surface. Lance grinned at him, his eyes growing darker by the second, his emotions licking at the back of Keith’s brain like a flame. 

“Impatient, hmm?” Lance purred, bringing his hands up to cup Keith’s face. 

“Want you bad, can’t help it,” Keith answered, melting into his touch. Keith couldn’t tell which he liked better; Lance being gentle and loving, or Lance being mean and rough. Maybe his favorite was just a mix of both. 

“When are we gonna fuck around in an actual bed?” 

“The only request you made last time was that we avoid cell floors. You didn’t say anything about metal walls in community hallways.” 

Lance rolled his eyes and leaned forward to capture Keith’s lips with his, pressing gently before becoming more insistent, more urgent. Lance made his mouth into harsh angles and rough surfaces, nipping at Keith’s bottom lip and pushing his tongue against Keith’s and clashing their teeth together in a way that should have felt wrong but was nothing but right. 

Keith pushed Lance against the wall by his hips, erasing the distance that Lance had given himself and pressing himself closer but not close enough. Keith’s hands rubbed little circles on the smooth skin of Lance’s hips, making sure he stayed right where Keith wanted him. 

Keith loved it when Lance kissed him, because it was like a little slice of obtainable heaven. Lance’s lips were like liquid fire against his, and he loved the way they tasted and how thick they were, the way the flesh gave in to his will when he bit down on it, pulled on it, pushed it back. Inside Lance’s mouth was even better, though, soft and warm and velvet. Lance tasted like campfire smoke and apples and dirt, and Keith would lose himself in the soft heat of his mouth if he could. He’d tried so many times. 

Keith pushed his thigh between Lance’s legs as his hands began to wander, scratching lines down the supple skin of Lance’s back and pinching his nipples under his shirt. Lance ground his hips against Keith’s thigh as his fingers wrapped themselves around the soft strands of Keith’s hair and  _ pulled _ , the stinging sensation sending a shiver down Keith’s spine that Lance could surely feel. 

Lance pushed Keith away slightly and grabbed the hem of his shirt, yanking it off quickly before reaching with impatient hands towards Keith’s. Everything felt so much better when they were skin to skin, chest to chest. Keith could feel the steady rhythm of Lance’s heart and the pulse of his blood and he hungered for it, wanted to hear it in the back of his mind for as long as he lived. 

Keith’s hands found their way between their bodies as his lips continued to work against Lance’s, unbuttoning Lance’s pants and hastily shoving everything that was hiding his beautiful, warm skin down to his thighs, letting him kick it the rest of the way off as Keith began to undress himself. 

Keith’s hands smoothed over Lance’s skin as it was revealed to him, ran over the scabs and the scars and the imperfections as if it was his holy grail, his sacred text. He pulled back from the kiss to let his eyes wander, to let himself drink in the sight that he was still so unused to seeing but would give anything to see again and again. 

Lance moaned softly, his desperation and desire and need hitting Keith all at once, no doubt an answer to the feelings Keith himself was drowning in. 

“So very pretty, Lance,” Keith repeated, burying his face in Lance’s neck as he drug his nails over the dips and curves of his body. “So soft and so pretty and mine, mine, mine.” 

Keith sunk to his knees, ignoring Lance’s hardened cock completely and nosing at his thighs, taking deep breaths of his scent and letting it poison his head, infiltrate his thoughts, dictate his actions. The skin that was reserved for Keith, the skin that only he and Lance got to see, smelled like musk and sweat and flowers and made Keith lose his mind, lose his self-control, lose himself, in Lance. 

Keith made eye contact with Lance while sucking black blood to the surface of his skin, loving the subtle contrast between the mocha skin and the inky mark he left behind. Keith’s teeth were next, leaving matching bite marks on his hips, almost hard enough to break the skin and just hard enough to pull a needy whine from Lance’s lips as he bucked his hips forward. 

“Who’s the impatient one now?” Keith teased, digging his fingertips into the marks he had just left, watching the muscles of Lance’s legs twitch. 

“Not my fault, you got me all excited,” Lance answered breathlessly, his fingers returning to Keith’s hair and abandoning their fruitless scrambling on the smooth wall he was leaning against. Keith grinned up at him from the ground, admiring Lance from this unusual angle. 

“My bad.”

Keith straightened his legs again and brought his lips back to Lance’s, kissing him hard and fast and heavy and deep, grinding against him so Lance would moan loud and long into his hungry mouth. 

“So good, Lance,” Keith groaned against his lips. “All for me, just for me.” Lance arched his back and ground his hips right back, wrenching a moan from Keith. 

“Want you now, right now. Want you to make me yours, please- please- please.” Lance had his eyes shut tight and his head tilted back, but Keith didn’t need his vision to know how bad Lance wanted him, how close he was to losing it, how strongly he felt for the man in front of him. Keith would give Lance everything he wanted, the moment he asked for it, and now was no different.

Keith stepped as close to Lance as he could get and gripped his thighs, lifting him up until his legs settled around his hips and he was leaning against the wall for support, his arms wrapped tightly around Keith’s shoulders. Keith then kissed him again, drunk on his lips and his taste and the sounds that left his throat and slipped into Keith’s.

“D’you want me to prep you, baby?” Keith asked, pulling away and panting against Lance’s lips. Lance shook his head quickly, arching his back and digging his digits into Keith’s shoulders.

“No, no, no. Want it to hurt, so bad, so good.” 

Keith let out a half-hearted moan and buried his face in Lance’s chest as he lined himself up and began to push in, barely giving Lance time to adjust before he was thrusting forward all at once, causing Lance to cry out. Lance’s emotions were equal parts pleasure and pain and were hitting Keith more intensely than they ever had, drowning out his thoughts. Keith moaned into Lance’s skin as Lance panted underneath him, rolling his hips and getting used to the feeling of Keith filling him up so good, so completely. 

Maybe they should’ve waited. Maybe they shouldn’t’ve had sex for the first time while on their cycles, so that it could be soft and gentle and  _ special _ . Maybe they shouldn’t’ve had sex for the first time in the middle of the  _ hallway _ , against the  _ wall _ , where absolutely anyone could walk by or pull the security footage and see them, catch them. Most people probably would have waited, would’ve made it something to remember. 

But, was this not?

Sure, it wasn’t what most people would’ve done, but Lance and Keith had a way of doing that, of consistently falling outside the norms. This sex didn’t mean any less to him than vanilla sex in a bed with candles and rose petals would have, and Keith knew without a doubt that Lance felt the same.

Besides, their cycle just made the whole thing better, made sure the pain added to the pleasure instead of taking it away. Keith wanted this, and Keith  _ favored _ this, the way they could just be themselves and do things however they wanted and still have it mean just as much. The way Lance was hurriedly bouncing his hips the best he could given his current position assured Keith that he did, too. 

So he adjusted his grip on Lance’s thighs and pulled out before pushing back in, hard and fast and deep, pulling a moan from both of their throats. He adopted a steady rhythm then, pushing Lance’s back farther up the wall with every thrust, pulling on Lance’s hair and making his head bend at an awkward angle, exposing his throat to Keith’s brutal teeth. 

A seemingly never-ending stream of moans and soft noises were leaving Lance’s lips, ripping out of his throat every time Keith hit just the right spot, every time Keith slid back into him roughly and slammed him against the wall again. Keith was better at keeping quiet but no less affected, the friction of his dry cock and Lance’s walls euphoric, his hands constantly shifting his grip on Lance’s thighs to change the angle and make them feel as good as he could manage. Lance’s hands had an unyielding grip on Keith’s hair, his nails digging into his scalp and yanking on the strands, bringing tears to Keith’s eyes and making him feel  _ so good _ .

“Fuck, Lance,” Keith almost sobbed as Lance began to move his hips and meet Keith’s thrusts, spikes of pleasure washing over Keith’s skin again and again, making his head spin.

“Keith, please, harder, please, please, please,” Lance begged, his voice wrecked and broken, igniting a flame inside of Keith.

Keith pressed Lance more firmly against the wall and adjusted his grip before slamming forward as hard as he could, choking on his moan and moving his lips to swallow Lance’s as he did it again, repeating the movement with as much consistency as he could manage, shifting his hips around until he found  _ just  _ the right spot, the noise that left Lance simply unholy.        

“Fu-u-uck, Lance, so good, so good, so good.” Keith moaned, Lance’s voice breaking as it left him in little staccato  _ ah’s _ . Keith could feel the familiar heat coiling in his limbs and his gut, begging for his attention, and he could feel Lance’s pleasure in his head, clogging his senses and wrapping him in familiarity. Keith brought his hand between their sweaty, tense bodies and pumped Lance’s dick, moaning when Lance’s hips stuttered up into his fist only to jerk back down onto his cock a moment later. 

Lance’s hands had moved from his hair and were now clinging to his shoulders, his nails digging in hard enough to break the skin, the pads of his fingers slipping against the dark blood drops welling up and slowly spreading over his skin. Lance nipped at Keith’s ear, catching it between his teeth and biting down like it was his gag, his moans breathy against his skin and even better when Keith could hear them this loud, this close. 

“You’re mine, Lance. All mine. So pretty for me, so tight for me, so fucking good, just for me. I could fuck you all day, just watching you take me, so good. Such a  _ good boy _ , Lance.” Keith groaned, losing his composure. All he wanted to do was make Lance feel  _ good _ , make Lance feel wanted. All he wanted to do was praise him and let his emotions fill his head and make sure he knew what he did to Keith, how weak he made him feel.

“Ye-es, fuck, I’m yo-ours, forever and ever and e-ever.” Lance stuttered, his face screwed up in pleasure at the thought. 

Keith could feel the intensity of the emotions flooding Lance’s head, could feel Lance’s heaving chest pressed against his, could feel Lance’s muscles twitching and his hips stuttering, and he knew Lance was close. 

Keith knew he was leaving bruises in the shape of his fingers all over the skin where he was holding Lance up, holding him against the wall, but he knew he’d just use it as an excuse to look at Lance’s ass and thighs and skin while he was naked until they went away, or until he made more of them. He knew Lance was scratching the hell out of his back and shoulders, but he knew he’d just grin every time he remembered they were there and admire them in the mirror when he was alone, that he’d let Lance look at them whenever he wanted, whenever he asked. 

Lance moaned, bringing Keith out of his head, the noise long and loud as his hips jerked back and forth, undecided between the pleasure of Keith’s cock and the pleasure of Keith’s hand, greedy for both. His pleasure raged in Keith’s head as he reached his climax, his spine bowing away from the wall and sinking him farther onto Keith, seating himself fully as he twitched around Keith and spilled onto his chest, into his hand.

Keith kept fucking up into Lance’s tight heat until he fell over the edge himself, sinking his teeth into the juncture of Lance’s neck and shoulder, not holding back and ignoring Lance’s cry of pain as he let out a cry of his own, muffled by Lance’s skin. 

Keith could feel his cum seeping around his cock inside of Lance, could feel Lance’s satisfaction regarding the action, and decided he’d never felt better then he did right then, happy and sated and wrapped firmly in Lance’s arms. 

They stayed there for god knows how long, slumped against each other and breathing heavily. Keith could taste Lance’s blood in his mouth where it was still closed over Lance’s skin, and he pulled back to suck on the skin around his teeth marks, to lick up the black blood that was leaking steadily from the puncture wounds he’d made. 

“I really liked that,” Lance breathed, his lungs still unable to function properly, slurring his speech. 

“The biting, or the whole thing?”

“Both.” Lance laughed, unwrapping his shaky legs from Keith’s hips as Keith eased out of him and set him on the ground. Keith watched his cum trail out of Lance’s pretty little hole as he turned and began to gather their clothes off the ground, hiding the view as he turned around and held out a hand to Keith. 

“We’re walking back naked?” Keith asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“We just had sex against the wall. It can’t really get worse than that.” Keith shrugged and took his hand, letting Lance pull him back towards their room, or Lance’s room that they were sharing. 

“Does it hurt?” Keith asked quietly, swinging their arms. 

“It’s not bad yet, but it will be. It’ll feel good, though.”

“There’s something wrong with us, isn’t there?”

“Yeah.” Lance laughed a little, more genuinely than Keith expected. “It’s just something we need to figure out and learn how to handle. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t mean we’re radically different or dangerous or anything.”

Keith sighed, dragging his feet. “The others don’t seem to think so.”

“The others can suck both of our combined asses.” Lance snapped, glaring at the ground. Keith frowned. 

“I thought I was the only one who got to suck your ass.” Keith pouted playfully, although he couldn’t stop himself from smiling when Lance laughed, the sound noticeably different, lighter, than the laugh Keith had grown used to hearing during their bouts of insanity, since their exposure to the beasts. Lance tugged on Keith’s arm and led him through the doorway, letting the door swish shut behind them with a hiss. Lance tossed their clothes to the floor and climbed into his bed, beckoning for Keith to follow. 

“Do you think the others will let us go on missions again if we start having sex in front of them?” Lance asked innocently, looking up at Keith with wide eyes. Keith snorted, shaking his head as he laid beside Lance and wrapped him in his arms. 

“Considering we weren’t even close to being in a relationship before this whole thing started, it’d probably just go to prove their point, in their minds.” 

“Yeah, you’re right.” Lance sighed, snuggling close. “I guess I’ll just have to keep my beastie space boyfriend all to myself.” Keith chuckled, burying his face in the nape of Lance’s neck, drowning in his scent. 

“Yeah, I guess you will.”

It was quiet after that, and Keith relished in the silence and the warmth of Lance’s skin, the press of Lance’s body against his own. Keith was lucky, he knew, to have Lance the way he did, and he was positive he’d do everything in his power to keep it that way. 

So, with a soft smile on his lips and his face buried in Lance’s hair, Keith fell asleep, content to ignore his problems until the morning. 

* * *

Lance knew the others were curious. He could see it in their faces, could feel it in his head. He knew it was a cautious curiousness, as well. He understood, in part, but he was still angry.

He knew they were curious about the bruises and scratches adorning Keith’s body, curious about the visible bite mark on Lance’s shoulder, curious about how sedentary Lance had been this morning, and curious about how close to his side Keith always was. 

He knew they would never ask, too afraid of the answer. Lance almost wanted to blurt out that they’d fucked, that the bruises on his skin were love bites and pleasure marks and not the product of some epic evil showdown between the two of them, but Lance didn’t think that’d go down well, knew that it might even be taken worse, might just add to the problem. So he sat quietly and tried not to move too much, amazed that he’d even made it in here when Allura had called, and stewed in his anger, wishing Keith could wrap his arms around him and make him feel better. 

Apparently, Keith did not care about the others in the room, because he did just that. 

Allura cleared her throat awkwardly drawing the attention of everyone in the room, her eyes purposely avoiding where Lance and Keith sat, either because of the obvious reason or because they were holding each other or because of both. 

“We have been asked to come and visit a planet for diplomatic means. The planet Andipith and its people, the Andipthans, have requested that we meet with them about the coalition and stay for a few days in their capital city. For such a mission, we need the whole team, including Lance and Keith.” Allura paused, likely waiting for any outright objection, even though they all knew she’d never get any. The paladins were outright cruel, at least. “We cannot let others see the way they look, lest it make them question our abilities and our intentions, so I’ve asked Coran to locate some holo devices for the two of you to wear that will project an image of the way you looked… before. As long as you keep them on, and behave yourselves, the mission should be a success.”

Lance couldn’t blame them for wanting them to wear cloaking devices. Allura was at least right about that, the fact that people would trust them less if they looked like deranged monsters. Hell, if their very own family didn’t trust them, why would strangers be compelled to?

So they agreed, promised to wear the devices as part of their armor when they reached the planet and began to suit up, and promised to try and act like they had before they changed. Then, they sat in silence, wrapped in each other’s arms and holding conversations with each other in their heads as the castle flew towards Andipith and they watched the others struggle to have normal interactions with Lance and Keith in the room. Lance barely held back his laughter. 

What were they even afraid of? Lance thought they  _ wanted  _ him to talk less. Lance had looked in the mirror a couple times, and he looked at Keith as often as he could, and all the black wasn’t  _ really  _ that distracting. They’d never acted hostile towards the others, never given any indication that they were dangerous. They’d never hurt anyone but each other, and that was a mutual agreement that they others had never bothered to ask about. So, what  _ exactly  _ were they so afraid of? What was it about Lance and Keith that made it to where no one could hold a conversation with them or look them in the eyes? 

Lance continued to watch in amusement as each person prattled off their own reason for needing to leave, right now, immediately. Coran and Pidge flew off to locate the holo devices, Hunk disappeared to perfect his earth-like food recipes, and Shiro and Allura just kind of looked at each other and then walked off, probably going to look at maps or discuss strategies or talk shit about them or something like that. 

Lance pulled Keith up off the ground and swung their hands between them as he walked towards the training deck. It was the one place that Lance and Keith always felt the most normal, because it was easy to adjust the gladiator difficulty setting to account for their enhanced strength and train, just like they had before.  The gladiators didn't treat them differently, didn't act skittish around them, didn't exclude them or leave them out. They attacked them as they always had, and it was the only thing that managed to comfort them when it felt like everything was changing and moving and falling apart too fast.

If they weren’t sparring alone with the gladiator they were fighting each other, learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses up close and personal in a way they hadn’t during team training. They already knew how to protect each other, but learning how to take advantage of the other 's mistakes and counteract their attacks was a whole new experience. They always agreed beforehand on how far they were going to go, how far they were willing to be pushed and how far they were willing to push the other. Most days they had little qualms about what they’d do to each other, but every once in awhile, it got to be too much.  Sometimes the sparring made their thoughts go to fast and made their head lose its footing and made it feel like  _ everyone  _ was against them, and they had to stop and be reminded that they still had someone, that they still had each other, despite everything, and that it would never change.

Other times, if they got pouty enough about hurting each other, they’d spawn more than one gladiator and work on protecting each other, focus on keeping an eye out for each other and responding to each other’s actions, responding to each other’s capabilities. When they fought like this, they tried not to rely on the fact that they could sense each other’s emotions, tried to ignore the fact that they could focus on the bond between them and use it to locate each other and learn about the situation they were in. They tried to use pure instinct and talent instead, but it was often much harder than it sounded. 

Even less often, they’d show off a little (to no one but themselves, of course) and turn off all the lights in the training deck, fighting the gladiators using the glow of their chestplate and the connection they had between them. That method of sparring was always the most fun and was always the most rewarding, considering how close to Keith he felt when they were done, but it was admittedly the least useful to their paladin training. Because, what if they weren’t like this forever? What if one day, they couldn’t sense each other anymore, didn’t have whatever special powers the beasts had given them? It would be considerably harder to fight like this, even if there was some appeal in knowing how to do so, in being able to.

When they were feeling especially bored or adventurous they'd even switch weapons, laughing at each other as they fumbled and attempted to effectively use the other's weapons. Keith had terrible aim when a gun was involved, even though he could throw knives precisely enough to split hairs. Lance wasn't overall to horrifically bad at using a sword, but fighting and defeating someone face-to-face was surprisingly less satisfying than the look of surprise, the look of confusion on their face when you shot them in the back. Lance liked being perched above the action, liked watching his friend's backs and taking care of whichever ones they could not. He liked being the back-up plan, the plan b, the insurance policy. He liked having his attention split between every paladin at once, like the adrenaline of catching someone just in time. It was much more difficult to get all of that when using a sword, and Lane thought it kind of boring. Both of them had gotten better at switching, though, and they could almost beat the first level of the gladiator with their new weapon. 

Essentially, Lance and Keith spent a lot of time on the training deck.

Today, though, Lance wasn’t too set on moving much, so he happily settled against the wall and watched Keith as he fought the gladiator by himself, the difficulty set a few levels below what was actually challenging so Keith could feel powerful, in control. 

The clang of his sword against the various surfaces of the gladiator was harsh and rang loudly in Lance’s ears, but he took a strange sort of comfort in the sound. If he could hear it, it meant Keith was still alive, still kicking, and he didn’t need to open his eyes or reach into his mind or invest energy into making sure. He didn’t have to panic, didn’t have to make periodic checks, didn’t have to worry. He could just listen, could just feel it vibrating through the floor,  _ clang, clang, clang _ . 

If he listened closer, he could hear Keith’s soft grunts of exertion, could hear every inhale and every exhale and every stutter in his breath, could picture the look on his face and the shape of his mouth as each sound left him. Lance only wished he could feel Keith’s breath washing over his skin, serving as a constant reminder that Keith was there whenever he needed him.  Lance was sure he could fall asleep here, propped up against the wall, lulled into comfort by the sounds from Keith's lips. It would be the best sleep he'd ever gotten.

Keith trained until Hunk called them for dinner (he couldn’t even come tell them in person like he used to, he had to use the comms), giving Lance a piggyback ride to the dining hall. 

The five of them ate in uncomfortable silence, the goo projecting obscene noises around the room without the normal chatter to drown it out. It was kind of disgusting, and Lance ate with a permanent grimace on his face, his shoulders pulled up next to his ears and his back hunched. Keith’s amusement at the action echoed in his head and made Lance feel warm in his chest, and suddenly, he wasn’t so focused on the goo.     

Eventually, Lance looked up and everyone else in the room had left, leaving Lance and Keith by themselves. Lance wasn’t really that surprised, but he threw his bowl of goo against the wall anyway, just for fun. 

“Come on,” Keith said, shoving his own bowl of the table with a grin. “I’m sweaty. Let’s go shower.”

Lance stood slowly and followed him out of the room, immediately grabbing Keith’s hand as soon as they were side by side in the hall.

“What do you think it’ll take, hmm?” Lance asked, rolling his head back to look at the ceiling. 

“Single-handedly destroying Zarkon and his entire corrupt empire, probably,” Keith answered, a lazy smile on his lips.

“Then we’d probably have to find a way to bring back Altea, too,” Lance added, snorting.

“And then we’d have to resurrect King Alfor and the old paladins and all the people who used to live there.” 

“And then, after all of that, we’d have to beg, because it still wouldn’t be enough.” 

Keith snorted this time, cutting his eyes over to look at Lance. 

“Maybe we can find some space priest and have them do an exorcism, or have them bless us or baptize us or something.” 

“Or we could find the best doctor in all of space and have them give the paladins a full rundown of all the things we are and aren’t capable of, so then maybe they’d trust us more. Or, even better, they could just perform surgery on us and extract the leftover beast bits themselves.”

“Or we could, I don’t know, just try to convince them on our own.” 

Lance frowned, furrowing his brows as he looked up at Keith. 

“How?” 

Keith frowned as well, lowering his eyes. “I don’t know,” he sighed, tightening his grip on Lance’s hand. “I just want things to go back to normal, and I don’t know if we have  _ time  _ to go ask the opinion of a space priest or a space doctor. Shouldn’t they just kind of, I don’t know, be able to recognize for themselves that we aren’t going to hurt them or do something bad?”

“Yes,” Lance said, huffing a breath. “They  _ should _ be able to tell. I don’t even see what the big problem is. At least I don’t have to prove myself to you.” Lance smiled at Keith and yanked on his arm and pulled him closer, pressing their arms together as they continued down the hall. “Of all of the paladins to go through this with, I’m glad it was you.”

Keith looked over at Lance and smiled at him, warm and soft and loving. It made Lance’s insides melt. “You know I never would have left you to deal with this all on your own. I can’t speak for the others, but… I’d do anything for you.”

Lance couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his lips, couldn’t stop himself from leaning over and pressing his mouth against Keith’s, couldn’t stop himself from tugging on Keith’s bottom lip with his teeth as he pulled away. And, if his actions made Keith look up and down his body with bedroom eyes, well, that was just an added bonus. 

Eventually, given their slow, meandering pace, they reached the showers, and unspokenly both stepped into one. Lance mindlessly took off his clothes as he watched Keith do the same, his hungry eyes willing the fabric to disappear faster. The water warmed the air around him as their bodies were exposed to it and Lance hummed happily, kicking his clothes to the side and moving forward, towards where Keith was already standing behind the curtain.

Lance let his eyes run up and down, over and over and over the exposed skin of Keith’s body, over every scar and freckle and stretch mark, over every scratch and mole and imperfection. 

Lance brought his hands up to cage either side of Keith’s hips, skimming his thumbs over the dimples at the small of his back. He stepped closer to Keith and pressed a kiss to his shoulder, relishing in the shudder that wracked Keith’s frame. 

“Lance,” Keith warned, leaning his head on Lance’s shoulder to look up at him as Lance stepped closer still. Keith raised his eyebrows, as if to say they were here to shower and that was  _ all _ they’d be doing, but Lance just grinned down at him and ran his hands from his chest down his sides and to his thighs, digging his fingertips into the soft flesh there. 

“Yes, Keith?” Lance asked, unable to keep the devious look out of his eyes as he dipped his head and sucked the skin of Keith’s neck into his mouth. Keith whimpered, latching his hands onto Lance’s arms and backing up into Lance’s chest, pressing every inch of their bodies firmly together. Lance’s dick twitched at the feeling of Keith’s ass against him.

Lance relaxed his fingers and slid his hands back up Keith’s thighs, pausing at Keith’s hips to lightly scratch across the smooth, pale, taut skin there. Keith pushed his hips backward and tried to force Lance’s hands lower, whining a little in the back of his throat. Lance’s mouth cruised over the side of Keith’s neck that he could reach, venturing down to suck on the sensitive skin stretched over his collarbones and kissing back up to nibble on his ear. 

“Let me take care of you,” Lance murmured, nuzzling the side of Keith’s face. Keith moaned quietly and nodded, letting his eyes slip shut as Lance’s hand slid across his wet skin and wrapped around his half-hardened cock. Lance pumped him lazily, rolling his hips into Keith’s ass ever so slightly, in time with the movements of his hand. 

Lance shuffled them back so he could lean against the shower wall and wrapped his legs around the man’s in front of him, keeping the spread open wide as he picked up the pace. Keith rolled his head to the side and pressed a kiss to Lance’s neck, his fingers tightening on the skin of Lance’s forearms as he made a soft noise in the back of his throat, his eyelashes fluttering. Lance groaned, burying his face in Keith’s wet hair as he ran his free hand up and down the slick expanse of Keith’s skin. 

Lance adopted a steady pace and tightened his grip, beginning to flick his wrist when he reached the tip of Keith’s cock. Keith tipped his head back and bared his throat and moaned, the sound vibrating in Lance’s chest, causing Lance to snap his hips forward and grind against Keith’s ass and lower back. He could feel Keith’s emotions slowly trickling into his the back of his head, could feel his desire and his admiration and how much he cared, and it set fire to a hollow part of his chest. 

“So beautiful, Keith.” Lance sighed, letting his eyes flutter shut. His fingers dug into Keith’s skin as Keith moaned, pushing his hips into Lance’s fist each time Lance moved over him. “So pretty like this, pliant and soft in my arms. So happy you’re here, so glad, so glad.” 

Keith hummed happily, tilting his head to face Lance and reaching out to call him with his mind, soft and gentle. 

_ Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me. _

Lance captured Keith’s lips with his, ignoring the awkward angle of their heads and moaning into the kiss, grinding his hips. Lance nipped at Keith’s bottom lip and sucked gently on his tongue as he swiped his thumb over Keith’s slit, swallowing the delicious moan that followed. Lance released Keith’s cock and opened his fist, running his palm over Keith’s tip, speeding up and slowing down, pressing hard and feather light. 

Keith whined and bucked his hips, grinding back on Lance a moment later, ripping a breathy half-moan from his throat. Lance fixed his grip on Keith again and returned to his rhythm, steadily jerking him as Keith began to shake in his arms. 

Lance and Keith danced to an imaginary beat, their hips rocking against each other lazily as they moaned and panted into each other’s mouths and stood shaking against the wall. Lance rutted against Keith’s skin and moaned at the slippery friction the water provided, an unreliable mixture of slick and rough. Lance salivated at the sight of the water running down Keith’s chest and hummed in pleasure at the sight of the rivulets streaming over his tense muscles, his eyes unable to get enough of the naked body between his arms. 

The frequency of Keith’s moans had increased, and Lance could feel him holding himself back inside his head. He untangled their legs and turned Keith around, pushing him against the wall before swiftly moving forward and gripping both of them in his fist. Keith let out a high-pitched moan and let his head fall back, his hands flying up and finding purchase in Lance’s hair. 

“It’s okay, baby,” Lance breathed in his ear, moving his hand over them quickly. “You can let go now.” 

Keith moaned again, tightened his grip, and was cumming in between their bodies a few pumps later, his legs shaking and barely able to hold him up. Lance followed a few seconds later, letting them slide to the ground and adjusting them so Keith was back between his legs, leaning against his chest. 

They sat in near silence and worked on catching their breath, using the feelings in their heads to communicate rather than words, since it was simpler, clearer, easier to understand. Lance wrapped his arms tightly around Keith and nuzzled his face in his neck, letting his scent and the still-running water of the shower wash over him and lull him into peace. 

Lance decided that this was his absolute favorite place to be, out of every planet he’d ever visited and out of all the places he’d loved back on earth. He’d rather be here, with Keith, warm and safe and happy.        

Eventually, they pulled themselves out of the shower and wrapped their torsos in towels, walking hand-in-hand back to Lance room lazily. Lance was feeling better now after the shower, but he was glad he had a night to sleep before he was expected to behave in front of other people.

His bed was as inviting as Keith’s bare skin, and he settled against both with a happy sigh, pulling Keith towards him until all the space between them was gone, holding him there tightly. It didn’t take him long to drift off, basking in the afterglow and the warmth of his sheets and the wonderful feeling of Keith’s affection lapping at the back of his head like gentle waves. 

And in his sleep, he dreamt that it was just him and Keith, alone in their bed, hidden from the outside world and free to sleep and fuck and cuddle all they wanted to, without having to worry about the pesky problems of the outside world.

* * *

As much as Lance hated being woken up on a normal day, Lance already resented the fact that consciousness was an option today. As soon as he stepped out of his bed, he’d have to pretend and please and produce, and he didn’t want to do any of it, even if having Keith would make it mostly tolerable.

He was so  _ exhausted _ , and it had nothing to do with sex or sleep or training. How was he supposed to feel energetic and alive if he had the constant crushing weight of trying to figure out and deal with all the changes to his mind while also trying to appease and soothe his flighty family members? 

Keith made him get out of bed, though, and made him get dressed, as well as walk down the hall and eat breakfast and follow the others into the control room, but Lance pouted at him the entire time. Coran and Pidge had returned sometime the night before (probably while Lance and Keith were busy um, showering) and were quick to pass the holo devices off to Lance and Keith, almost as if they thought Lance and Keith would put them on right away, and that it’d make them feel better if they did. 

Lance shoved his into his back pocket and stared at Pidge while she stared at him, her eyes flicking between his eyes and his pocket, so quickly he wasn’t sure she knew she was doing it. Eventually, she looked away and Lance pulled Keith over to sit in his chair, plopping Keith on his lap as the rest of the paladins sat in their seats and silently watched the screens as Andipith grew closer and closer. 

As soon as Andipith could be seen on both the screen and through the window, Lance and Keith rose from their seat and walked away to don their armor, listening to the muffled shuffling behind them as the others got up to do the same. 

Keith got dressed faster than Lance and activated his device first, and Lance took a moment to run his eyes over the paler, smoother canvas of Keith’s skin. It was weird seeing Keith with his purplish eyes again, but Lance would never claim he didn’t like it, not when Lance had activated his own device and he could feel Keith’s pleasure at being able to see Lance’s eyes again, even if it wasn’t really real. 

“Is everyone ready?” Shiro asked the quiet room, each of them standing in silence and staring at the floor in interest, ignoring Lance’s gaze. 

“Yes,” Keith answered, gesturing for Shiro to lead the way. Shiro turned and walked to the front entrance of the castle, meeting Allura and Coran in the foyer, giving them a look that didn’t go unseen by Lance. 

_ This is going to be awful _ , Lance told Keith, letting the way he felt do the talking. 

_ Undoubtedly,  _ Keith answered, knocking his hand against Lance’s, a small grin on his face as his eyes flickered. Lance grinned back, a laugh threatening to escape his throat. Keith was right. It was funny. 

The castle landed in a field of tall grass, the sway of the stalks mesmerizing as the air pushed past them. Allura led the way down the ramp and onto the ground, not looking back or waiting to see if the others were following her. Coran went next, quickly catching up and matching her stride, his concern for her wafting in Lance’s nose. 

Hunk, Pidge, and Shiro departed next, talking quietly amongst themselves as they traveled forward. They might as well’ve been screaming about it, as the taste of their apprehension and concern for the mission ahead was bitter on Lance’s tongue. Lance and Keith trailed them slowly, amused grins hidden behind their glamours, fingers loosely intertwined between them. 

“How much you want to bet that Allura only let us come to keep up appearances?” Lance asked, grinning at Keith.

“I don’t have any money, but if I did, I’d bet all of it. She probably won’t address us directly the entire time, unless we do something she considers ‘unsatisfactory’.”

“At least we’re good guard dogs,” Lance sighed, unable to wipe the smile off his face, even if it didn’t represent all the same emotions that it used to.  

Andipith was not unlike Earth. The sky was blue and the plants were green and the river running through the capital city looked familiar, like something Lance had seen many times before. The clouds, however, were a soft orange color, and the buildings were cubes made out of soft brown bricks with two windows on each side. The castle, straight ahead down the long dirt road they were traveling on, was similar to a castle they’d see back on Earth, made of sandy colored stone and decorated with turrets and towers. 

The Andipthans themselves were fairly humanoid in nature, the only visible difference being their additional set of ears (both sets pointed like the Alteans and set so close that they practically merged into one) and the rainbow of skin colors. The language they spoke was a far cry from English, Lance couldn’t even begin to describe it if he tried, and he once again thanked whichever ingenious mind had created the translators in their helmets. Lance didn’t want to spend any more time here than he had to, but he supposed that it wasn’t the worst place to be. 

“Someone here is good at hiding,” Keith said, sniffing the air. Lance could feel it, too. Every planet had a scent, most of them strong enough to reach Lance and Keith even when they were confined to the ship miles and miles away, and this planet smelled like secrecy, like deceit. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. 

“Can you smell that?” Lance asked the three in front of them, just loud enough for them to hear. Shiro turned to look at them, frowning. 

“Smell what?” 

“Take a deep breath,” Lance instructed, taking one himself. Deceit smelled like dark wood and salt water and winter and decay, the scents racing to outpace each other, to be the primary note. It made Lance laugh. 

“I don’t smell anything,” Shiro said, still frowning, looking at him strange. 

“That’s too bad.” Lance grinned, shrugging his shoulders. Keith giggled next to him, taking an audible breath. 

“Yes, too bad.” He echoed, looking up at the sky. Shiro turned back around, his face hidden but his emotions not, his shoulders set and tense.

Maybe they were being weird, but was he really supposed to try to explain the way his brain worked now, attuned to emotions and smells and senses in a way that was wholly unnatural? Lance didn’t want to be locked up again, didn’t want the others to think that they were right, that Lance and Keith were different and dangerous and something to be feared. 

They weren’t. They never had been.

An official met them at the palace gates, leading them through the gaping entrance and down several dimly lit halls before bringing them to a stop in the throne room, several hundred feet away from the dais and the thrones atop it. 

The Three Kings of Andipith were large beings, a good few feet taller than Lance himself, and washed in gloriously opposed pastel colors, their robes and crowns singing with the soft glow of their respective skin. 

The first king was colored a soft blue, similar to the color of the sky outside the palace walls. His robes were a pale orange, not unlike that of the clouds, and his crown was matte and white, nestled into his hair, a blue so soft it was almost white, reaching towards the sky and sticking up in every direction, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. He introduced himself as  Caeruleum, and Lance was only mildly surprised to find out that they had names outside of “The Three Kings of Andipith”. For most royals, that was enough.

The king situated in the middle was red but not aggressively so, soft and alluring like the red at sunset. His robes were colored a gentle olive green, his hair only slightly longer and a muted maroon shade. His crown was black, but a careful shade of black, as if it was ashamed of being so dark. He was named Rubrum, and Lance stopped himself from laughing as his helmet supplied him with a translation.

The last king was a soft yellow, the only shade that didn’t make Lance want to pry his eyes out, similar to the shade of Hunk’s lion. His robes were purple, almost more of a lilac, and Lance was only a little jealous of them. His hair was the longest of the three and stuck up in the air in an almost identical fashion, but his hair was yellow-y orange, and much more vibrant than that of the other two, even if it could still be considered pastel. His crown was a soft grey and sat nicely in his mane of pokey hair strands. He called himself Flavo, and Lance had to stop and wonder if the kings knew that their names translated to “blue”, “red”, and “yellow” in English, had to wonder if their names meant anything in their own language. 

The Three Kings of Andipith were beautiful, and The Three Kings of Andipith were afraid. 

It was all Lance could focus on, once he caught a whiff. 

Their fear was different than that of their fellow paladins. It was older, stronger, wilder, and more importantly, not of them. The scent of it clogged Lance’s nose, made the two of them burst into raucous laughter at the sight (the  _ smell _ ) of the kings. Allura froze, turning to look at them quickly before turning back to the kings and bowing shakily.

“I apologize, your Majesties. Please ignore them. They are… not themselves right now.” Allura explained as she straightened her spine, her voice strained. 

“It is no worry, Princess Allura. We are glad that you could join us for the Day of Setting Suns. It is the most beautiful day of the year.” King Rubrum said, his face kind.

“We thank you for inviting us,” Allura smiled, relaxing almost immediately. “It is an honor.”

“I can smell it.” Keith interrupted, grinning. He was excited, curious, dying to question the kings about their fear. The room sat in curious silence, their eyes flicking between Lance and Keith. “I can taste it, right here.” Keith stuck out his tongue and pointed, it’s darkness hidden by the glamour. Lance laughed, the sound echoing around the walls of the room darkly. 

“Tastes good,” Lance added, winking. 

“ _ What  _ does? What are you talking about?” Allura demanded, turning to face them. Lance reached into the king’s minds then, swallowing the word that was bouncing around in their heads, the word to name the emotion that was coating Lance’s tongue like a film. 

“Timor.” 

_ Fear _ .

The kings stiffened in their seats, their hands gripping the edges of their thrones. The kings were lucky that the attention was not on them, that Lance and Keith had taken the bullet for them. It was obvious they didn’t want anyone to know.

“Fear?” Allura repeated, her helmet translating for her. “What fear? Fear of what?” She turned back to the kings then, looking to them expectantly. 

“They are mistaken, Princess. We have no fear, and we have not for many years. That is why we wish to join the coalition.” King Flavo told her, avoiding Lance and Keith’s gaze. Keith laughed, the sound ignored by those around him. 

“My deepest apologies, your Majesties. Lance, Keith, Pidge, Hunk, why don’t you four go and explore the city while Shiro, Coran and I stay and discuss the coalition?”

They stayed silent but filed out of the throne room obediently, immediately splitting up once they were through the castle’s front door. Lance grinned at the back of their heads as Hunk and Pidge all but ran from them, disappearing into the busy city streets as quickly as they could. 

The streets, the people in them, didn’t appear to be afraid. They were nothing but joyous, bustling around without a care in the world, preparing for the Day of Setting Suns. So, what were the kings keeping from their citizens? What did they have to be afraid of, on a planet like this? 

Lance giggled, weaving through the crowd, Keith close on his heels. Lance wondered how long it would take for the people to notice that something was wrong, wondered how much the kings would accept blame for if something horrific happened, especially if it was something they already knew about.

“We should find it,” Lance said, spinning in a circle, letting his eyes run over every single detail of every single thing around him. “this thing that they’re afraid of. Maybe we could even destroy it, do them a favor.”

“Where would we look?” Keith asked from behind him, his voice almost lost in the crowd.

“Wherever the secrets are kept.” Lance shrugged, surging forward to lead the way through the streets.

* * *

Every castle had a secret library, a secret vault, a secret monastery for housing the things that the public could never know about. It was just a matter of finding it, of knowing where to look. On the very edge of town, there was a rundown looking temple of sorts, it's lilac-colored stones engraved with symbols Lance didn’t recognize, worn down by the wind and the weather. It looked like the type of place that many would overlook, disregard. It was the perfect place for secrets, especially well hidden, well-blended ones.

The wind whispered across the stone as Lance and Keith meandered slowly through the rooms, leaving prints in the dust on the floor. The rooms without books or scrolls or texts were scanned quickly but otherwise ignored, the more promising rooms split up between Lance and Keith for them to search. It didn’t take Lance long to realize that the books were organized by subject matter, so he skipped over sections about medicine and advancements and focused on things like history and lore, looking for something that fit the description. 

Lance didn’t know how long they looked, how many books he cracked open, how many words his eyes flew over, but eventually, they found it. 

“Lance,” Keith breathed from the room next door, his voice soft. Lance set down the book he was holding, a truly boring thing about the local fauna and flora, and walked to Keith’s side, peering at the open pages and cocking his head to read them.

**_Os Sunt_ **

_ The Os Sunt have not been seen for many years, but we are still aware that they exist here on Andipith. Their cries can be heard at night, originating from the Forbidden Mountains. It is the job of the Three Kings to protect their people from the Os Sunt, and to ensure that the innocent stay far away from the Forbidden Mountains and keep their lives. The Os Sunt are very persuasive creatures, but do not fall for their lies. They cannot give you anything they offer, unless it is a slow and painful death. They are not to be messed with or disregarded. The Os Sunt are the biggest danger on this planet, and they will be our downfall if we do not properly protect those who need it.  _

_ The Os Sunt act around the orders of their god, Osume. His every wish is carried out, to the best of the Os Sunt’s ability. They do not show mercy, they do not accept excuses, and they do not see reason when Osume is concerned. Osume’s day of complete worship is the Day of Setting Suns. The Os Sunt are most dangerous on this day, known for planning and carrying out devastating attacks on nearby peoples in Osume’s name. Do not let down your guard. Do not let the Os Sunt close. They will infiltrate faster than you can defend if you give them the chance. Do  _ not  _ give them the chance. It will be the end. May the goodwill of the universe be with you. _

 

“Bingo,” Lance grinned, letting out a broken laugh. Keith grinned back at him, closing the book and sliding it back onto the shelf. “They’re going to attack tonight. That’s why the kings are afraid. That’s why they called us here.”

“I knew it seemed weird that they’d invite us, rather than just let us come in our own time. We were scheduled to visit their star system next month. However, if this  _ is _ their reason for bringing us here, then why didn’t they explain the problem when we called them out? Why didn’t they ask us to help?” Keith questioned, pacing slightly.

Lance had wondered the same thing. Who calls the strongest force in the universe to their planet, a planet in need of imminent protection, and pretends nothing is wrong? They should have told them. They would’ve helped. They  _ would  _ help, no matter what.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, does it? We’re gonna to step in, regardless.”

Keith stopped pacing and faced Lance, a grin slowly splitting his face. “Let’s take a trip to the Forbidden Mountains then, shall we?”

* * *

“The Three Kings said there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Allura insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.

“We found something in the archives that these people have feared for  _ years _ , and we have reason to believe they’re going to attack innocent people tonight. We need to help protect them.” Keith argued, his eyes narrowing. 

“ _ There is nothing to protect them against.”  _ Allura spat, glaring at them. “You cannot barge into someone else’s social and political affairs and pretend that you know more about them than they do. I don’t care what you read, I don’t care what you saw, and I don’t care what you think you know. If the kings say there isn’t a problem, then there isn’t one.”

“Fine,” Lance growled, stepping forward. They were attracting a crowd, the people on the streets around them slowing to a stop. “We’ll go by ourselves.” 

“You will  _ not _ ,” Allura said firmly, standing tall. “You will come with us for a guided tour of the city, and then prepare for and attend the celebrations for the Day of Setting Suns, and that is  _ all  _ you will do. You will stop interrupting our interactions with the kings, you will stop making a scene, and you will forget this  _ conspiracy  _ about a danger you need to interfere with.”

“Can’t you  _ smell it _ , Allura?” Keith asked, his voice rising in pitch as a cruel smile unfurled on his lips. “Can’t you smell the way the Three Kings  _ quiver _ , the way the trees and the dirt and the air  _ reek _ of  _ secrecy _ and  _ danger _ and  _ darkness _ ? Can’t you  _ taste  _ the urgency and the apprehension in the wind?”

“No,” Allura sniffed, turning away. “and neither can you.”

Keith turned and look at Lance, the darkness of his eyes flickering behind the glamour. Lance knew that look, knew what Keith wanted. If the paladins would not accept them as unchanged and would not listen to the warnings they could now provide them with, then they would have to pretend to be the monsters they already thought they were and take matters into their own hands. They would not, however, let innocent people die because of their team’s foolish mistrust.

Lance dug his fingers under the glamour device on his suit and pulled it off, tossing it over his shoulder. Lance listened happily to the murmur rush through the crowd and took a deep breath as the easy-going aura in the air turned sour. If there was one thing Lance was good at, it was putting on a show. 

It was getting dark, and more and more people were filtering into the streets to watch the forthcoming sunsets, but they needed everyone to change their minds, to be scared enough to forget the Day of Setting Suns and hide away inside their homes where it was safer. 

Keith, free of his own glamour, whirled on the bystander nearest to him and stepped in close, leaning his face into theirs. 

“Can you smell it?” Keith asked again, taking in a dramatic breath and letting his eyes flutter closed as he did. “Can you smell the death, the blood, the fear? Do you know who’s going to put it there?” 

Lance mentally told Keith to take over while he was gone and turned around to slip away into an alley, following the smell of slowed decay he could sense nearby. He shot at the lock on the butcher shop door once he located it and stepped in through the back, searching the floor. He grinned when he found it, the bag of blood slumped against the wall, and slung it over his shoulder, reclosing the door as he slipped back into the dusk. 

Lance followed the pull of Keith’s humor and climbed to the roof of the building closest to him, communicating his need in his head. Keith subtly tossed up his knife a moment later, his eyes never leaving the cowering citizen in front of him. Keith had her backed up close to the alley, within a good shove’s distance of its mouth. Lance landed on the ground next to the bag of blood and slit it open, careful not to let any of it spill before he needed it. 

Lance reached out and stroked Keith’s mind with his own, letting him know he was ready. Keith’s voice raised in answer, the citizen he’d been yelling at stumbling into the shadows of the alley a second later, her fall broken by Lance’s arms. 

“Hi,” Lance whispered, talking quickly. “Sorry about all this. To make a long, complicated story short, we’re trying to protect your people from the Os Sunt, but our friends won’t listen to us or help us, so we had to resort to, well, this. We really don’t want to hurt any of you, though. What’s your name?”

“The Os Sunt are a myth.” the girl said quietly, staring at Lance. He smiled sadly. 

“If you’re lucky, they are. If not, we need your help. What’s your name?”

“Jaimine.”

“Is it okay if I rip your shirt a little, Jaimine? I have some blood from whatever animal it is you eat here that I’m gonna put there, to make it look like I stabbed you and everything. It’s important that people fear us and lock themselves in their homes, where they’ll be safe and it’ll be easier for us to protect everyone.”

“Yeah, that’s okay. If what you’re saying is true… you  _ can _ protect us, right?”

“Of course,” Lance answered, cutting a slit in her shirt over her side and dipping his hand into the bag of blood. “Me and Keith? We’re Paladins of Voltron. We can protect you, no sweat.” 

Lance moved quickly, trying his best to make it look like a real puncture wound. Once satisfied with his work, Lance dipped Keith’s knife in the blood and helped Jaimine stand. 

“I just need one more thing,” Lance said, dabbing some blood on her forehead and using some of his own dark blood to add depth. “Well, technically two things.”

“What are they?” Jaimine asked, watching the blood drip off of Keith’s blade.

“One, when I tell you to, I need you to scream for me, nice and terrified, like your life is in actual danger. Two, I need you to plead with the rest of the crowd, convince them to go inside and  _ hide _ , convince them to stay off the streets. You won’t have to do much, Keith and I can handle the rest, but it’ll certainly help.”

“You  _ promise _ my people will be safe?” 

“I swear on my life,” Lance assured her. “Sorry if I pull your hair.” Then Lance was stepping up behind her, bringing the knife gingerly to her throat, and grabbing her hair with his other hand. Lance waited there for a moment, breathing in Jaimine’s emotions, pleasantly surprised to find that she wasn’t afraid of him. Go figure.  

“Are you ready?” Lance breathed, tightening his grip slightly. Jaimine started to nod then stopped, conscious of the knife pressed to her throat. 

“Yes.” 

“Good. Scream.” 

Lance winced as she did as he asked, her scream piercing the air. Lance grinned as the feeling of the air slowly freezing over, turning cold, fear coiling around and around in his head. Good, it was working. 

Lance shoved Jaimine roughly back onto the main street, careful to keep the knife hovering above her skin. The crowd gasped, moving away instinctively. In all the excitement they had forgotten, forgotten about Lance and forgotten about the girl who had disappeared into the alley. They certainly remembered now. Lance grinned at Keith as they met each other’s eyes, the darkness swirling in their depths. 

“Thanks for the present, Keithy,” Lance purred, batting his eyelashes at him and giggling. Lance looked around the street then, laughing when he saw the Andipthans pressed against the sides of buildings, as far away from Keith as they could get without actually running away. The other paladins were frozen, watching on with wide eyes and slack faces. It seemed as though, for all that they had feared it, they hadn’t expected Lance and Keith to get  _ violent,  _ weren’t prepared to react when they did.

The fear grew at the sound of Lance’s cackle, the darkness laced with his voice enough to tell them something was off about the two of them, that they really should be afraid. 

“Please,” Jaimine begged, her voice laced with a convincing tremble. Lance could feel her thoughts, though, and knew she was doing okay. “Please don’t hurt us. Let us go. We haven’t done anything wrong.  _ Please _ .” 

Lance cooed, releasing her hair to stroke the side of her face. “Did you think we were gonna change our minds, just because you asked?” Jaimine nodded slowly, the blade smearing blood across her skin. Lance laughed again, gripping her hair again. “That’s adorable. Too bad, then.”

Keith let out a giggle of his own as Pidge tried to sneak up behind him, a bundle of rope in her hands. That girl always had weird shit in her pockets. Keith waited until she was close enough before bending, flipping over her, and grabbing the rope in her hands, pulling her back against his chest and tightening some of the rope around her torso and arms while the excess was held in one hand. 

“That was cute,” Keith said in his most patronizing tone, yanking her backward and towards the nearest house. Pidge struggled and yelled as Keith adjusted the rope, cut it with his bayard, and tied her arms together, shoving her through the open door of the house. He disappeared long enough to tie her to something solid before coming back again, a dazzling smile adorning his lips. This time, the other paladins were ready to fight, but training had done Keith well, and Keith had more of it than all of them combined. Plus, he was a Galra hybrid with unknown potential and the added bonus of increased strength from the remnants of the beast. 

Keith punched Shiro in the jaw and sent him reeling, falling back into Allura. Keith yanked a struggling Hunk into the house next while the others recovered, Pidge’s yelling audible when Keith reopened the door. 

“You got this, babe!” Lance yelled, a giddy laugh leaving his lips as he watched. Shiro tried to rush Keith as soon as he appeared in the doorway again but Keith was ready for him, stepping aside and watching in amusement as Shiro tripped over the threshold and fell on his face. Keith stepped over him and wrenched his arms behind his back, tying them together quickly and yanking Shiro up off the ground. Lance had almost forgotten that the beasts made them stronger, but it was extremely evident now. 

By the time Keith was ready for Allura, she was just standing there, her mouth open in astonishment and her limbs lax. She let Keith tie her up and lead her away, her resignation apparent. Lance hoped she would fight harder in a battle against the Galra, hoped that she only hesitated because these were her  _ teammates,  _ people she was supposed to be able to trust. 

Lance thought the whole trust thing quite funny, really. 

“You,” Lance said, pulling the knife away from Jaimine’s throat long enough to point it at an athletic looking young man. “You look like you can run fast. Why don’t you go and tell all your friends that they should stay inside tonight? Why don’t you go tell everyone that, if I see anyone outside, I’ll grind their organs so deep into the pavement that even replacing the bricks won’t take the stain away?” The boy nodded shakily before turning and sprinting the opposite direction, quickly turning a corner and disappearing from sight. Lance grinned and shifted his eyes over the crowd, looking for someone to assist. 

“And you,” Lance continued, pointing to another, a girl, of similar stature. “Why don’t you help him? This is a rather large city, after all.” 

The girl swiftly ran away as well, her voice promptly echoing around the streets as she called out her warning.

“What about the ceremonies? What about the celebrations? What about the Day of Setting Suns?” a random lady asked, raising a hand tentatively and taking a half-step forward. 

Lance sighed, resting his head against Jaimine’s and pouting sarcastically. “I guess you’ll just have to watch out of your window, won’t you?”

A whiff of disbelief caught his attention then, the scent familiar, and a slow smile unfurled on his lips. 

“Keith?” Lance called, watching as Keith closed the door to the house they’d taken over and locked it. 

“Yes, love?” Keith answered, stalking closer. 

“Hold onto my toy, will you?” 

“Of course.” Lance passed Jaimine to Keith but kept the knife, setting off across the street, a predatory grin on his lips. Lance could hear Jaimine pleading with her people behind him and he smiled at her in his mind, thankful that at least one person believed them. 

Lance walked into the alley across the street and came to a stop in front of Coran, who was pressed against the brick wall behind him, his eyes wide and confused. 

“Hello,” Lance grinned, twirling his knife with a flourish he was surprised to find he possessed. 

“I won’t let you do this,” Coran said in disbelief, narrowing his eyes slightly. “I won’t let you hurt these innocent people.” Lance laughed. 

“You really don’t know anything about me, do you?” With that, Lance grabbed Coran’s wrist and pulled him forward, pressing the knife against his throat in no time. Coran stumbled, clearly not expecting Lance to possess so much force. Lance lead him back into the light then, past the terrified citizens and into the house where the others were, unlocking the door as he went and collecting some rope from the ground as he urged Coran forward. 

The paladins sat on the floor with varying emotions, tied to a metal support beam that ran horizontally across the wall in the back of the room. 

“Lance,” Hunk pleaded quietly as Lance pulled Coran to the wall and began to wind the rope around his wrists, the blade between his teeth. “Don’t do this. This isn’t you.”

Lance sighed as he finished with Coran, walking the few steps it took to reach Hunk, crouching in front of him and taking the blade from his mouth. He locked stares with him for a few ticks before he grinned, his tongue pushing through his teeth and lapping at the blood on his lips. 

“I don’t see how you’d have any idea.” Lance hummed, tapping the tip of the knife against Hunk’s cheek. Hunk evidently didn’t have anything else to say, his eyes sliding shut as Lance watched. He stood and turned then, strolling out of the room casually. 

“You won’t get away with this, Lance,” Allura told him, her voice cold. “Voltron is the strongest force in the universe. We’ll stop you.”

“And which half are you betting on?” Lance asked, looking over his shoulder to grin at her, raising his eyebrows. “Because, it seems to me, you’re tied to a wall.” 

Allura clenched her jaw and Lance laughed, stepping out the door and locking it behind him. 

* * *

The walk back to The Three King’s castle was a long one, and not one that Lance was sure they had time for, but they needed answers, needed to know what they were up against. The streets were empty and quiet, as everyone had heeded the warning and followed their instincts and  _ hid _ , covering their windows as Keith and Lance passed and grinned at them.

The palace was guarded by a single sentry, who was obviously unnerved by the dead streets and was obviously unnerved by Keith and Lance. 

“We’d like to request a meeting with the kings,” Lance said politely, folding his hands in front of him.

“I’m sorry, sir, but-” Lance rolled his eyes and huffed and stepped forward, pressing Keith’s knife to the guard’s throat and effectively cutting him off. 

“We’d  _ really  _ like to request a meeting with the kings.”  

“O- Of course, sir.” The guard rushed to say, bowing his head slightly. Lance took his knife away and gestured for the guard to lead the way into the palace. 

The walls of the castle were decorated with splashes of color and framed pieces of art, drawing Lance’s attention everywhere at once. Lance liked that this castle felt like more of a home than any of the others he’d visited so far, and was glad that he got to walk the halls again. He hadn’t paid very much attention the first time he was here. 

The Three Kings of Andipith looked surprised to see them again but quickly wiped their faces of emotion as Lance and Keith came to a stop in front of them. Their efforts at a poker face made Lance grin. 

“The smell is still here,” Keith commented, sniffing the air, grinning. “Fear, thick and heavy. What are you so afraid of, your Majesties?” The kings did not answer, sitting still as stone on their thrones.

“How can you smell it? Why are you two the only ones with such a power?” King Flavo asked, dodging the question.

Lance shrugged his shoulders, smiling up at them. “We had a little tussle with some evil space beasts, came away with some souvenirs. No biggie. The important thing is, the stench of your fear gives me a headache. So, mind telling us what you’re so deathly afraid of?” 

“What does fear smell like?” King Rubrum asked, tilting his head curiously. 

Lance paused, mulling the question over in his mind. 

“It smells like mint,” Lance decided, crossing his arms over his chest. “Real strong mint, too, the kind that burns the back of your throat. I don’t know if you people have mint on your planet, but that’s what it’s like. Now, are we gonna have to ask again?”

“We hear you’ve been in the streets, harassing our citizens. Why should we tell you?” King Caeruleum said finally, tilting his head to copy King Rubrum.

“You can ask the one named Jaimine, we didn’t hurt anyone. We were just trying to scare them, trying to convince them to hide. Easier to protect them that way, you understand.” Lance answered.

“Protect them from what?” King Rubrum asked, his eyes guarded. 

“I don’t know,” Keith shrugged. “you tell me. The Os Sunt, perhaps? I heard they were pretty active tonight.” The kings stiffened in their seats just like they had last time they spoke, flicking looks back and forth between the three of them.

“You are not from here. How do you know about the Os Sunt?” 

Lance shrugged, a lazy smile tugging at his lips. 

“It’s been a few hours since we last saw you. We did some research. There’s a beautiful abandoned monastery at the edge of town, you know, just  _ chocked  _ full of knowledge.” Lance and Keith stared at the kings expectantly, waiting for them to offer up some knowledge. It took a long time for them to cave, and Lance could feel their apprehension about sharing. This was important, though, something they needed to know.

“We made a deal with them,” King Flavo said suddenly, ignoring the looks from the other two. “the Os Sunt. They’ve been a menace to our people for generations, but the royal families have tried to keep their existence a secret, tried to pass them off as myths. It was easier than explaining to our people how hard it would be to protect them, easier than filling them with fear, easier to just tell them to avoid the mountains where the Os Sunt lurk or face the consequences on their own. On our first Day of Setting Suns as the Three Kings, however, the Os Sunt attacked, as they had in the past, and we could not stomach the mess they made, the lives they took.” 

“So, we made a deal with them.” King Caeruleum continued, taking over. “We met with them and agreed that we would send them a group of five people, as a sort of treat, a sort of dessert for them, every month if they promised to stop their large attacks, both on Day of Setting Suns and on all other days. Recently, however, our gifts began to fight back, began to escape and deprive the Os Sunt of their sweets, so they terminated our agreement. They sent a message and told us they would attack on the holiday as they had in years past, but they’d leave some of us alive, so long as we didn’t try to interfere. They don’t need us to survive, you see, but we’re inclined to believe them, as they seem to glean a certain sort pleasure from our suffering.”

“Why are we here, then? It can’t be a coincidence that you called us here today.” Keith pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest to mirror Lance. 

“We were hoping you would figure it out on your own, so that we would not technically be interfering, but something could still be done.” King Rubrum answered quietly, averting his eyes. 

“Is there anything we need to know about these bastards?” Lance asked. 

“They are harsh creatures, made of bone and held together by the will of their god. They do not have flesh and thus cannot feel pain. The only way to vanquish an Os Sunt is to shatter their life force, but it is kept within a cage of bone at the very center of their being. It will not be easy to reach.”

Lance grinned, cracking his neck and shaking out his arms. “Sounds like a walk in the park.” Keith laughed, sending a wave of fondness his way. 

“We wish you luck, Red and Blue Paladins of Voltron.” King Rubrum said, nodding.

“Thank you,” Keith giggled. “We’ll probably need it.” 

Lance could feel the king’s eyes on them as they turned and walked away, grinning madly and linking their hands together. Lance had far too many feelings rattling around in his head, and no matter how dangerous it seemed, Lance was glad for the chance to beat some fuckers up.

* * *

The kings weren’t joking when they said the Os Sunt were harsh. Lance hadn’t even fought any of them yet, but they were certainly harsh on his eyes. Their bones gnashed together audibly as they walked around, their movements jerky and uncomfortable to watch. Lance could tell the kings weren’t joking when they said the Os Sunt were held together by the will of their god.

Lance could see their life forces as well, hidden away in the center of their skeletal chest, protected by multiple layers of reinforced bone. Lance was inexplicably drawn to it, drawn to the faint glow emanating from their chest, and wanted to destroy it. It wasn’t because he felt he owed something to the Andipthans or because he wanted to prove something to the other paladins. The darkness inside him had wanted to destroy something for a  _ while  _ now, had been waiting patiently for the right target, and he’d finally found it.

He’d never hurt his family or his friends or innocent people who didn’t deserve his violence, but Lance would be lying if he claimed he’d never hurt the people who deserved it, claimed that he wouldn’t fucking enjoy doing it, wouldn’t look forward to it, every chance he got. 

The thought made him want to laugh, but it’d give their position away, so he swallowed it down into the pit of his stomach and kept it there, letting it dissolve while they watched the Os Sunt prepare for an attack from the rocky ledge above their camp. The camp was settled at the bottom of a valley that reminded Lance of a smaller, less impressive version of the Grand Canyon, and was open and exposed on both sides.

_ Do we have a plan?  _ Keith asked silently, quirking his imaginary eyebrow.

_ Nope. _

_ Are we gonna make one? _

_ Sure. Here’s the plan. We attack, one from each side, silently pick off those on the outskirts of the group, avoid detection for as long as we can, then just fucking go for it as soon as they notice us. _

Keith stared at him for a moment, trying his best to look unimpressed but ultimately being betrayed by the fondness radiating off of him in waves.

_ Seems like a solid plan. _

Lance scooted closer to Keith in the dark and pulled him in by the back of the neck for a kiss, one that was slow and passionate and only added to the emotion they were broadcasting into each other’s minds. If they were gonna die, they were gonna do it knowing how much they cared about each other, knowing how much it would hurt to be separated. Lance pulled away and Keith chased his lips, kissing him again before pushing to his feet and holding his hand out to Lance.

“Be careful, babe.” Keith murmured, cupping Lance’s cheek once he was safely on his feet. 

“You too, beastie.” Lance grinned softly, pecking his lips against Keith’s one last time before he stepped away and began to scale the cliffs, dropping silently to the ground a few moments later. As soon as his feet hit the dirt he was slinking forward, his steps light and quiet as he walked around the back of the cliff face and peeked around the edge to peer at the Os Sunt’s camp wedged into the valley. 

The fire in the center of the camp lit up the walls and the faces and the beings prowling around with swords of steel, but its smoke did nothing to mask the scent to death that clung to every crevice. The smell only strengthened Lance’s resolve, only encouraged him to creep forward and activate his bayard. It did nothing but encourage him to quickly attach his silencer (a handy addition that Pidge had been happy to help him with) and press his gun under the chin of the nearest Os Sunt, pulling the trigger as his other hand reached inside its chest cavity and beat against the cage surrounding the life force.

Lance realized quickly that there was nothing he loved more than the feeling of crushing the orb of life between his palms. Absolutely nothing. It made him giddy, make him drunk, made him want to take and take and crush and crush. It made him move forward with grace and stealth that surprised even him, let him take and take and crush and crush without making a noise, without altering the entire camp he was there. 

He could feel the pull of Keith from across the camp, could feel the same sort of adrenaline rush creeping into Keith’s head. Lance wished they could be closer, wished he could see the darkness swim joyfully in Keith’s eyes as he took life after life, wished they could crush the souls between their joined palms. The only thing Lance had to do for his wish to come true was kill faster, so he willed his limbs to speed up and bashed against the cages of bone with his fist hard enough to really hurt, barely suppressing the shudder of pleasure that ran down his spine at the sensation of the throbbing pain. 

Honestly, with his current job title, maybe this desperate need to feel and be grounded by pain wasn’t such a bad thing. 

The swift murder of the Os Sunt slowed down considerably when the apparent leader tried to rally his men and noticed a decent chunk of them were missing. It was a lot harder to hide when that many eyes were facing your way, when that many eyes were actively searching for you. 

So, Lance opened his throat and let out the darkest laugh he’d ever heard leave his lips before beckoning the skeletal nightmares forward, grinning at them. If he was going to go out, it would be with a bang, even if no one was here to see, to appreciate the show. He could feel Keith’s concern for him and sent him some of his own, but he wasn’t too worried about it. It hadn’t been hard to kill them so far, he just had to work a little more quickly, as well as figure out how he was going to crush the orbs from long distance if he needed to. 

By the time Lance had killed three of them, there were pressing against his body on all sides, clawing at his skin and shredding his armor (did he mention the Os Sunt had claws that were like, a foot long?). The pain only spurred him on and Lance ignored the skeleton scrambling onto his back, slowly squeezing the air from his lungs, as he kissed his fist and threw it forward, using enough force to bust through the bones standing between him and the orb and crushing it with his fist. Lance was suddenly very thankful for his newfound pain tolerance (if you could call it that) and his newfound strength. 

It was easier to thin the crowd then, even if his vision was swimming and his lungs were desperate for every trickle of oxygen they could obtain when the creature on his back was jostled too much and lost its viper grip. Lance didn’t need to breathe, didn’t need to think about the lacerations on his skin and the small inky puddles he was leaving on the ground as he moved along. He just needed to crush, kill, destroy.

Lance could feel the throb of Keith’s pain in the back of his head like a second heartbeat and it infuriated him that these  _ things  _ thought they had a right to touch Keith,  _ his Kieth.  _

The weight on his back was suddenly gone, and it took Lance much too long to realize he was to blame, took him much too long to realize that he was the one who had driven his fist through the Os Sunt’s body and crushed it into nonexistence. 

Lance couldn’t be bothered to look around and see how many were left, not when they were still coming at him from all sides and trying to claw through his skin like it was the wrapping on a present. Admittedly, they weren’t doing as well as Lance expected, but it in no way meant Lance had managed to go untouched, or that it didn’t hurt like hell when they managed to succeed.  

Lance grabbed two souls at once, one in each fist, and laughed his vicious laugh, becoming less scared and less overwhelmed and more pleased, more confident. It didn’t matter how many hits the Os Sunt had on him, he had killed more of them than he could keep track of. He was winning, and would be until one of them ripped out his heart.

He wasn’t about to let that happen. 

Lance let the darkness inside of him rush to the surface, let it take over as he got drunk on the feeling of uncertainty surrounding him on every side. The Os Sunt weren’t positive they would win, and that was more empowering than Lance knew what to do with. He was going to win.  _ They  _ were going to win, and they were going to save everyone, and they were finally going to show the others that yes, they were different, but they weren’t  _ different people _ . They didn’t have different opinions or different morals or a different understanding of who they were and what they were meant to accomplish. 

They were the same Lance and Keith that needed their family and needed their support and needed them to trust them so the void of space didn’t drive them insane.

Lance hoped this would make the others see, make them understand. Lance just wanted them to love him again, wanted them to hold him and look him in the eyes and mean it when they said they weren’t afraid of him. He wanted his life and his role in it to feel real again.    

“Lance,” Keith spoke softly, jarring him from his thoughts. “They’re dead.” Lance hadn’t realized he was bent over on the ground, slamming his fist repeatedly into the corpse of a skeleton, until Keith mentioned it. Lance hadn’t realized he was crying until he tried to look at Keith and the image was all distorted with his tears, hadn’t realized he was panting and shaking until he tried to stand up and had to have Keith’s help.

“It’s okay, baby,” Keith murmured in his ear, pulling him into a hug and smoothing a hand over his hair. “It’s over. We can go back and show the others what we did, show them that we haven’t changed in any ways that mean something bad for them.”

“We have to take a body,” Lance said quietly, sniffling and catching his breath. This was the first time he’d cried since everything had happened. “We have to take a body and  _ show them _ , or they’ll never believe us.” 

“Okay,” Keith said, pulling away. “We can do that.” Keith turned to the body closest to them and heaved it over his shoulder, holding it there with one arm while the other arm thrust its hand towards Lance and wiggled its fingers impatiently.

Lance let himself smile and calm down as he threaded Keith’s fingers with his own and led them back out of the valley, pulling them away from the still-blazing campfire and towards the darkened city, miles away. 

Lance understood why the Andipthans loved the Day of Setting Suns so much, and he let himself enjoy the gentle glow of the many suns as they continued to ride lower in the horizon, far past their typical allotment, setting one after the other in slow, lazy succession, despite the fact that the sky was already dark. It seemed such a good day to celebrate, such a good day to worship a god, and Lance understood why the Os Sunt had chosen it as their day of complete worship. Lance just wished he felt more like celebrating.

On any other day, the radiant reds and oranges and blues of the sunsets would have had him feeling nostalgic, comfortable, on top of the world. He and Keith had accomplished a great feat, slaughtering the entirety of the Os Sunt camp. He should’ve been happy about it, should have been  _ proud _ , even if it was largely thanks to changes in his being that were outside of his control. He should have felt  _ something  _ positive, instead of mountains and mountains of self-pity and anger and disbelief. 

It was infuriating, how everything he did was altered and distorted by one paladin or another. He missed the days when the presence of the paladins had made everything  _ better _ , instead of belittling and awkward. 

Lance wanted to scream.

He settled for a dark laugh instead. 

* * *

The paladins were right where Lance and Keith had left them when they returned. The streets were just as silent and still, and the suns had finally finished setting by the time they made it back.  

No one spoke as Lance unlocked the door and stepped inside. Lance hated the smell of their fear, their distrust, their anger. He didn’t fucking deserve it, and they’d never believe that. Lance brushed it off and crouched silently in front of Shiro, reaching behind him to untie the rope wound tightly around his wrists. Lance could hear Keith dragging the body into the house behind him as he worked, pulling the rope free and steeping away to allow Shiro to stand. 

Shiro stood faster than Lance had ever seen him move and sprinted towards Keith, who had his back turned to them as he propped the Os Sunt corpse up against the wall. Anger flared in Lance and he caught Shiro by the neck, slamming him against the wall and lifting his feet from the ground.

“Whatcha doin’, Shiro?” Lance growled, reluctantly loosening his grip so Shiro could breathe. Keith slipped around Lance and continued to untie the rest of the paladins, who had evidently decided to sit and watch instead of joining the attack. Lance was thankful for that; he really didn’t want to hurt them. 

“This isn’t you, Lance. We can help, you just have to let us.” Shiro said, bringing his hands up to squeeze the arm holding up his neck. The bite of his nails felt like nothing compared to the flames licking his skin from his battle wounds. Lance smirked slightly as Shiro glared at him, unhappy that his attempts at freeing himself were going nowhere. Apparently, Shiro didn’t like not being the strongest, didn’t like being lifted from the ground with one arm. Lance stifled a giggle.   

“Why don’t you trust us, Shiro?” Lance asked once he had composed himself, cocking his head to the side. “You know, when we were possessed, our lions didn’t let us pilot them. Now, though, they do. Don’t you know what that means? Don’t you trust their judgment? Don’t you trust  _ our  _ judgment? If we say we’re okay, that we’re better now and that the beasts are gone, why can’t you just take our word for it?”

“You can’t try and convince me that you two were better,” Shiro argued, narrowing his eyes.

“Ah, but we were. We  _ are _ . Better is not the same as different. Different is not the same as dangerous. Besides, it’s not like you bothered to ask that many questions. You operated off of your own assumptions, which were, might I add, largely incorrect.”

“You  _ hurt  _ each other,” Pidge spoke, her voice wobbly. “We saw the marks, I  _ saw  _ you do it.” 

“You’re not wrong,” Lance said, letting Shiro fall to the ground. “but it was mutual. It was necessary. There were these times where it’d get real foggy in our heads and it’d feel like we were going insane, and the only way to be grounded, the only way to come back to ourselves was to be hurt, to feel pain. We needed it, both of us, so we did what we had to. We never would’ve hurt any of you, though. It  _ baffles _ me that you ever thought we would.” 

“You  _ tied us to the wall. _ ” Allura spat, her anger tickling Lance’s nose. 

“Do you know  _ why _ , Allura? Do you remember why? It’s because we were trying to  _ save _ everyone, and you wanted us to go to a stupid party.” Lance answered with just as much animosity. “You see that fuck-ugly piece of shit leaning against the wall over there? That’s an Os Sunt, a creature that’s been terrorizing the Andipthans for countless generations. When we landed on this planet, Keith and I could  _ feel  _ that something was going to happen. We could smell it. It smelled like well-kept secrets, and that secret was the Os Sunt. When we met with the kings, they smelled like fear. We  _ knew  _ something would happen, and since you wouldn’t help, Keith and I took it into our own hands. We did what we had to do in order to save lives.”

“The kings said there wasn’t anything to be afraid of, that they hadn’t been afraid of anything in years. Why would they lie about that if so many lives were on the line?” Hunk asked, his voice stony and stoic.

“The kings struck a deal with the Os Sunt, and they weren’t allowed to directly interfere with the attack that was planned for tonight. They were hoping we’d figure it out on our own.”

“I don’t believe you,” Allura said, her eyes narrowed menacingly. Lance shrugged. He wasn’t surprised. Since when were they trustworthy, right?

“You can ask the kings if you really want. Or you can just assume that we’re lying and evil and actually out to take over the world. Just remember that we didn’t hurt anyone innocent, and we brought you a fucking body to prove our case, and we’ve never  _ once _ given you reason to believe that we’ve changed so much that we’ve lost our sense of purpose and duty and humanity.” Lance motioned to Keith and they turned around to leave, knowing they couldn’t do much more to convince them of their innocence. 

“That girl,” Allura said from behind them. “You stabbed that girl.” Lance sighed, turning around.

“Oh, you mean Jaimine? Nah, I didn’t actually stab her. Clever mix of a ripped shirt and animal blood from a butcher’s shop and asking for her help in a dark, forgotten alley. Really got you, though, didn’t I?” 

“You really expect us to believe that?” Shiro asked.

“ _ Yes _ ,” Lance said. 

“We don’t,” Pidge answered. 

“Of-fucking-  _ course _ you don’t.” Lance snarled, turning back around and shaking his head. “Enjoy the party,  _ heroes of Voltron _ . We’ll be on the ship.”

With that, Lance and Keith walked out the door, leaving it open behind them as they disappeared into the night.

* * *

Lance was trying very hard not to cry. Keith was trying very hard not to destroy the next thing he saw. It was so fucking  _ unfair _ that they were the ones who had to deal with the beasts and figure out how to save themselves, and then also had to deal with the repercussions of their pansy ass teammates not trusting them anymore. How were they supposed to come out on top? What more could they do to convince them that they were the same Lance and Keith, with the added bonus of a few new superpowers?

Maybe they’d never be able to.

But Lance had an idea, and Keith was murderous enough to try anything, and Lance really just wanted to be in pain so he could focus on that, his tangible, physical pain, and ignore the pain in his head and his heart and his thought process. 

The training deck had a nice floor for them to lay on, and Keith’s knife had a good edge for splitting skin, and Lance’s voice had a good sound for soothing the roaring noise in their heads. 

The fog was there, clogging his thoughts like never before, and the knick of the knife was a welcome distraction, one he needed more than oxygen. 

Lance grabbed Keith’s hand in his own and laid them down, all spread out on the dusty expanse of the training deck, all fuzzy and bloody and warm inside. 

It was nice. 

Lance hoped it would fix them.

If nothing else, at least it would take them away. 

* * *

They had made a terrible mistake.

It was wholly evident now. 

The paladins had sat on the floor of the stolen house until an official from the castle had ridden through the streets and announced that the threat was gone, that the celebrations were to commence as usual, that it was safe to come out and gather at the castle now. 

So the paladins had collected themselves and joined the others at the palace to celebrate, even if the technical event was over, and most everyone had missed it. 

Pidge had been the one to suggest that they talk to the people Lance had mentioned once they got there, namely the kings and Jaimine. Requesting a private audience with the kings was hard at a party, but they insisted that it was important, and were granted access. 

The kings only confirmed everything Lance had told them, that the Os Sunt had lurked beyond and preyed upon their civilization for as long as the records were kept, that the existence of the creatures had been kept silent for the good of the people, that the Os Sunt had ended their deal with the Three Kings and planned to attack tonight. 

Lance and Keith had saved them, saved  _ everyone _ , and it was their fault that they’d had to go to such extremes to make it happen. Lance and Keith had slaughtered every last Os Sunt and freed the Andipthans from an eternity of continued suffering, and they couldn’t even thank them, because they weren’t here. They weren’t here because of them. 

On top of that, the kings never once indicated that the threat to the people hadn’t been Lance and Keith at all, seemingly intent on keeping the true existence of the Os Sunt a continued secret. It made Pidge sick to her stomach, thinking that these people would never know, never question. Only one other girl knew, and Pidge was sure she had already been sworn into secrecy. 

Pidge talked to Jaimine herself, and she once again confirmed everything Lance had said. Keith had pushed her into the alley and Lance had broken her fall, given her a rundown of the situation, fixed her up with fake wounds, and asked her to scream and plead and help to convince her people. 

Pidge couldn’t believe that she’d ever thought otherwise. 

The others had asked around and no one at the party had any recollection or knowledge of Lance and Keith  _ actually _ hurting anyone, and it made Pidge sick. Lance and Keith were right. Lance and Keith were  _ heroes _ , and no one had believed them. 

“We need to get back to the castle.” Hunk said as they regrouped, worrying his bottom lip. Maybe he had a bad feeling, like Pidge did. 

“But-” Allura protested, looking over her shoulder at where the king’s sat. 

“Princess.” Coran interrupted, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We can come back. Right now, we owe Keith and Lance quite a large apology.” Allura nodded after a second and herded them out of the palace and back towards the castle perched at the very edge of town. 

Pidge had to keep herself from running.

The castleship was quiet when they got there, and they split up to locate Lance and Keith, trying to keep the panic out of their movements. 

Shiro was the one who found them, spread out on the training deck floor.

They were on their backs, staring at the ceiling, their limbs spread out like starfish and their hands intertwined between them. Pidge wanted to appreciate how calm they looked, wanted to revel in the blissful smiles on their faces and the relaxed muscles of their ruined bodies. 

She just couldn’t, though. She couldn’t bring herself to ignore the angry, red slits across their joined wrists, couldn’t take her eyes away from that ever-growing puddle of black blood between them that was being slowly infiltrated with red. She couldn’t look away, even as Shiro and Hunk picked up their limp bodies and carried them out of the room. The blood was still there, still slick as oil and a strange mix of black as death and red as wine. Pidge didn’t know what it meant, didn’t wanna think about it. 

She dropped to the floor and swirled her finger in the blood, still warm and thick. This was her fault. This was  _ their  _ fault. All this blood, simply because they couldn’t open their eyes a see their friends as who they were. Lance and Keith, different but exactly the same. Still kind, still brave, still  _ human _ . 

And hopefully, still alive.

* * *

Keith didn’t want to come out of the healing pod if Lance wasn’t there, too. He didn’t want to face the room of awaiting paladins by himself, didn’t want to have to look them in the eyes and hear what they thought about what Lance and him had done. Keith really didn’t want to talk to them at all, but he knew he’d have to eventually. So, as long as Lance was there with him, he would.

He could feel himself getting warmer, could feel the feeling returning to his limbs, and knew he’d be shoved out soon. He tried to fight it, tried to wait a little longer, but the cryopods didn’t take requests, didn’t read minds. They only healed, and Keith was being deemed all better. 

The others weren’t even there to catch him. They were standing on the other side of the room, facing their pods like a panel of judges, scoring them on their performance. Keith managed to stay standing and only staggered a few steps, so he was expecting a pretty high score. 

He didn’t have to look to know Lance wasn’t out yet, didn’t have to look to know something was different about him now than it had been when they’d stuck him in the pod. 

Keith looked down at his hands and saw that his veins had receded into his skin where they belonged, had returned to their normal bluish color, so light he almost couldn’t see them. It was strange. Keith then realized he couldn’t feel the emotions radiating from the others, couldn’t feel the perpetual fog in his head, couldn’t feel his skin begging to be sliced and damaged and bruised. 

Keith couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t see his tongue, but he could only assume that Lance’s idea had worked. He could only assume that they’d bled out the darkness as planned, let it drain from their veins and left it swimming in their puddle of blood on the training deck floor. 

Keith couldn’t tell if he was relieved or not.   

Five pairs of eyes flicked to the pods behind Keith but he didn’t turn, confident that Lance would find him on his own. A second later, he felt a finger tapping at the back of his neck, felt fingers tugging at the strands of hair at the back of his head as Lance’s presence settled just behind him. They may not need the pain anymore, but it was always a welcome distraction. 

“Welcome back,” Shiro said after several seconds of awkward silence, filled with all of them looking at each other before looking away again. Keith could tell the others had changed their stance since they’d last spoken, even without his powers to help. He could tell they wanted to ease things back into normal territory but didn’t know how, didn’t know the best way to go about doing so. Keith could see the purple fingerprints bruising on Shiro’s neck and felt a weird sense of pride at the sight of them, at knowing that Lance was the one who put them there. Lance and Keith stared at Shiro and didn’t answer, didn’t respond. “It looks like you’re both completely back to normal.” 

Lance giggled, the sound brushing Keith’s ears lightly. “Yeah. All we had to do was bleed a little more than usual.” Lance waved his wrist around in the air, and Keith watched Hunk’s face fall as he did. 

“We’re glad you’re here, and that you’re okay.” Allura said next, seemingly ignoring Lance, using her diplomatic voice instead of her “this is my family” voice. Keith clenched his fists and dug his nails into his palms, trying not to outright glare at her. 

“Are you?” Keith asked finally, tilting his head to the side. She looked uncomfortable, they all did. 

“Of course,” Shiro assured them, just barely clenching his jaw. 

“Interesting.” Keith hummed, nodding his head once. “It’s only because we’re not dark and scary anymore, though, right? Admittedly, I can’t read your emotions anymore, but I’m sure you’re all super relieved that we’re back to normal, so you don’t have to exhaust yourselves being scared and avoiding us anymore. Now you can go back to having normal conversations and looking wherever you want, being comfortable in your own home. Isn’t that great news, Lance? We’re finally not a burden anymore.” Lance hummed in agreement from behind him, and Keith took a second to imagine the sarcastic grin that was probably stretched across his lips.

“That’s not why,” Shiro argued, narrowing his eyes. Keith forgot that Shiro wasn’t used to Keith disagreeing with him, and the thought made him want to step closer and smile menacingly in his face, for no reason other than it’d finally have an effect.  

“Ain’t just a river in Egypt,” Lance muttered under his breath, sliding his hands around Keith’s waist and stepping closer to hold him from behind. Keith relaxed into his chest, watching in amusement as the others tried to hide the surprise on their faces. Their ignorance skills just kept on surprising him. 

“You guys can’t possibly blame us,” Pidge spoke up, struggling to make eye contact. “Being around you guys was  _ terrifying _ . You were, I don’t know. A lot different.” Keith snorted, shaking his head. 

“It’s interesting that you say that,” Keith began, grinning bitterly at them. “If I remember correctly, when all of this Voltron business first began and Shiro was struggling with his Galra arm, he was a lot different, was he not? And, Shiro, a near stranger to everyone but me, was met with nothing but support and love and encouragement, right? He froze up in battles, had a piece of  _ enemy tech _ as a body part that he barely knew how to control, and most importantly, lacked the bond with everyone that we all have now, but we all still trusted him, didn’t we? We trusted the fact that the Black Lion had chosen him, and we trusted him when he said he was okay and that he could figure it out, and no one walked around not meeting his eyes or excluding him from the conversation or pretending he wasn’t there. Right?” 

No one spoke, or raised their heads to look Keith in the eyes as he paused. 

“And, later, when we found out that I was part Galra,” Keith continued, tensing slightly in Lance’s arms. “I had the potential to be a lot different, and I mean, a  _ lot  _ different. We found out that I shared genetics with the biggest bad guy in the universe, the one that we were actively trying to fight against and destroy, that I could one day turn out to be  _ just like them _ , but no one treated me that way. We had no way of knowing what would happen, what could trigger me, what the options even were. In fact, we still don’t. But you never ignored me, or excluded me, or made me feel like less because of something I couldn’t control and didn’t necessarily want but had to deal with anyway. Sure, some people were less than welcoming, but at least that was  _ justified _ . At least you had a reason other than it was “scary” and “different”. And, eventually, you accepted me and helped me through it and gave me support because I was family, and that was what I deserved.”

Lance nuzzled his face into Keith’s neck, his breath washing across his skin softly, and tightened his arms around Keith, placing gentle kisses against his neck as he continued on. 

“I know we were different, and I know we probably scared the shit out of you guys. Hell, I was terrified of myself half the time. I just didn’t expect you guys to step back and leave us to figure it out completely on our own, to treat us like we were dangerous animals hellbent on attacking you. Maybe my opinion is skewed, but we never gave you a reason to fear us, not like that. All we needed, all we  _ wanted _ , was for our family to step up and show us support, to help us figure everything out and learn to deal with this  _ thing _ inside of us, this thing that was new and dark and unfamiliar, and we never got that. And it really  _ fucking sucked _ . So, thank you. At least next time I know I can handle it on my own.”

“Keith…” Shiro said, his face sad. Keith didn’t want to look at it, didn’t want their pity as they finally saw the other side of the fence that they’d never bothered to stop and consider. They weren’t going to be forgiven so easily, not when he  _ knew _ they were capable of providing the support that he and Lance had needed.

“You guys fucked up. I don’t know how else to say it, and I don’t know you can fix it, and I don’t really understand how it happened in the first place. I don’t know what to do about any of this, but I hope you guys feel as bad about yourselves right now, over something  _ you  _ did, as Lance and I felt about something we had pretty much no control over. I hope it fucking  _ hurts _ .”

“Don’t worry, though,” Lance added from behind him, raising his head so he could be heard. “If any of you ever find yourself in a situation like this, you  _ know _ Keith and I will be there to help. We’d never let anything get in the way of helping out friends when they need it.”

Lance loosened his arms and grabbed Keith’s hand, leading him out of the room as the paladins watched them go silently, an ugly mix of shock and unidentifiable emotions twisted on their faces.   

They stopped a decent distance away and looked at each other, bringing their hands up to cup each other’s cheeks and staring into each other’s eyes, drinking in the striking color of their newly brightened iris’. 

Keith wasn’t sure who leaned in first, but Lance’s kisses melted the tension from his shoulders and comforted him greatly, now that he could no longer sense Lance’s emotions as if they were his own. He figured he would probably have to learn how to translate his emotions into words at some point if he wanted to be able to communicate with Lance as well as they once had, but for now, he trusted his mouth to relay all the information he needed it to.  

As they pulled back, Keith traced his finger over the horizontal scar that ran from his left wrist over to Lance’s right wrist, a mark to remind them that they had each other even when they didn’t have themselves, even when they didn’t have the rest of their family. 

Keith had always cursed the healing pods for taking away the pain without erasing the reminders, but just this once, he was nothing but thankful. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who never promised a happy ending ? >:)
> 
> this is officially the longest thing I've ever written and I'm proud of myself and I hope you liked it <3\. please let me know if its trash, or if there's anything I can do better. also let me know if there's anything you liked or whatever. validation makes me thrive :))


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